Blue Period
When was Picasso's Blue period?
Pablo Picasso
Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904), characterized by somber paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colours, began either in Spain in early 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from the Blue Period, during which Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In his austere use of color and sometimes doleful subject matter – prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects – Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting "La Vie" (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The same mood pervades the well-known etching "The Frugal Repast" (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, also represented in "The Blindman's Meal" (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of "Celestina" (1903). Other works include "Portrait of Soler" and "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch".