Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso is an art historian, curator and jewellery designer, who has just published her latest book, Picasso Sorcier, exploring his superstitions and belief in magic. Photograph: Marc Domage © Private collection It was the only place in the apartment where it was warm.”Ī page from a Pablo Picasso sketchbook discovered by his granddaughter. I still have fond memories of those moments when we met up in the kitchen to draw together. Maya particularly remembers that, during the second world war, colour pencils and notebooks were in short supply: “That’s probably why my father wrote in my exercise books and coloured with my pencils. Other times, he’s depicting certain scenes, scenes of the circus. Sometimes he’s using the whole page to draw one particular thing. Other times, he would draw a dog or a hat. Sometimes they would depict different scenes. ![]() “Sometimes she’s making an image and he’s doing another, showing her the right way to do it. ![]() Picasso, who died in 1973, had been taught to draw by his father, a professor of drawing, “so that was something natural for him to do” with Maya, his granddaughter said: “There’s a beautiful page where he’s drawing a bowl and she’s drawing a bowl. It was a very moving moment, not only because you’re talking about one of the greatest artists but also because it made it very human. ![]() We tend to be very visual in the family so immediately she was plunged into that time. Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso told the Observer: “She said, ‘Of course, those are my sketchbooks when I was little’. If Picasso changed the way we create art with pencils, perhaps it is equally true that pencils changed the way Picasso created his art.Pablo Picasso with his daughter Maya, right, and the French actress Véra Clouzot at a Cannes art exhibition in 1955. If they stripped me naked and threw me in prison I’d spit on my finger and paint on the walls.” If they took away my crayons I’d use pencils. If they took away my pastels I’d use crayons. As the man himself said, “If they took away my paints I’d use pastels. While Picasso would leave his mark on virtually every artistic medium he touched, his impact can still be felt among pencil artists who sketch today. Gone is the tentative schoolboy, and in his place is the artist who would become a legend. The bold, clean pencil lines are precise and spare, but the figures are somehow fully realized. Gone are the extraneous flourishes and strict adherence to realism instead we have three figures that are simultaneously classical yet modern, detailed yet stark. One of the show’s final sketches, “Three Bathers by the Shore,” was completed in 1920 and shows the growth and scope of Picasso’s skill and vision. While the traditional figure of a mother holding her child is rendered in soft strokes that delineate a realistically shaded figure, the contortion of her body and her elongated hands suggest the bold composition of figures in Picasso’s later cubist works, as well as the spare, graphic lines in the his later sketches. Yet, even in this early schoolboy drawing, there are hints of what is to come the left arm, which has been re-drawn over an earlier attempt, gives the sketch a sense of movement, and the nimbus of pencils zig-zags that surround the figure both ground it and imbue it with energy.īy 1904’s “Mother and Child and Study of Hands,” the tension between classical composition and Picasso’s own trail-blazing aesthetic is apparent. While images of abstract, cubist figures flash before the mind at the mention of Picasso’s name, this early sketch is scrupulously careful one can almost sense the nine-year-old Picasso gritting his teeth as he attempts to accurately depict the statue before him. The oldest sketch in the collection is a simple pencil and paper rendering of a statue in the Picasso home, completed in 1890. The Frick Collection in New York City is hosting “ Picasso’s Drawings, 1890–1921: Reinventing Tradition,” a major retrospective that focuses on early drawings by Pablo Picasso, many of which are sketched with pencils. It is Pablo Picasso’s pencil works that are drawing high-profile attention this October. ![]() Pablo Picasso, who was born 130 years ago today in Malaga, Spain, experimented with a host of artistic mediums including oil paint, clay and pencil. He isn’t our Pencil Artist of the Week, but one might call him one of the Pencil Artists of All-Time.
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