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Barcelona Blues: Pablo Picasso, The Early Years

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After extensive research, in his “Barcelona Blues: Picasso, The Early Years” piece, Robert Lubar has shed light on one of the most misunderstood phenomena in art history: Picasso’s Blue Period. Although superficially these compositions seem to offer a poignant glimpse into Picasso’s personal life, or even symbolic and political connotations, the piece actually supersedes these inconclusive explanations.
Pablo Picasso’s 1903 La Tragedia, for example, consists of a woman with her back turned to us potentially embracing something in her arms, showing only the side of her face to spectators as she peers down rather seriously. A man near her then has his arms crossed, left leg slightly bent in an awkward motion, not necessarily indicating movement …show more content…

These details, along with the psychologically tense position and attitude of his figures, all serve to portray Picasso’s statement about social life: poverty has not gone anywhere, and the general inaction that precedes this disturbing issue only serves to silence the voice of the working class once again. It’s like the photo that Picasso drew of a man on what seems to be a mountain, and three figures looking up at him. Next to the figures he writes: “ Muy importante. Hos hable de cosas muy importante. De dios y de arte. Si si, pero mis hijos tienen hambre.” He recognizes that the cultural conversation highly revolves around the church and art as a new secular symbol, however, he demands the acknowledgment of the reality of the poor. Like society at the time, Picasso portrayed, but never explicitly acknowledged, the utmost problem that Barcelona was facing which was the apathy surrounding poverty and the working class. Picasso comments on the social life of Catalonia by desensitizing viewers first. He anesthetizes our emotions with faint blues, bleached greys, and deadening peasant costumes also colored in haggard and equivalent shades. He utilizes the stigma surrounding these palettes and diverts us from a narrative analysis or even an informative reportage of the ‘social question’ to a general comment

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