Monochromatic Color Scheme
Monochromatic color schemes are derived from a single base hue and extended using its shades, tones and tints. Tints are achieved by adding white and shades and tones are achieved by adding a darker color, grey or black.
Pablo Picasso's Blue Period
Picasso’s use of blue to communicate pain and desolation.
It’s easy to think of Pablo Picasso as almighty: a painter who changed the course of art history, who unabashedly made art in his boxers, and who responded to questions from critics by firing a gun into the air.
But the late Spanish artist wasn’t always so confident or successful. In fact, his early years were fraught with poverty, tragedy, and emotional frailty—and it was these struggles that he channelled into his first pioneering body of work, known as his Blue Period, beginning in 1901.
Picasso had struggled with a series of other deaths in his life. In 1895, his seven-year-old sister Conchita died of diptheria, and in 1899, the painter Hortensi Guell, a member of Picasso’s circle in Barcelona, threw himself off a cliff.
Picasso’s grief for his sister, friends, and painter-hero mingled with his own internal creative conflicts. By early 1901, he hadn’t yet found a unique artistic voice—nor had he sold enough work to support himself. Together, these crises troubled Picasso and “formed a pattern of events suggesting that artists—at least those who live in opposition to mainstream society—are fated to suffering and tragedy,” as curator William H. Robinson pointed out.
Picasso identified with this plight, as a 1901 self-portrait made clear. While he was only 20 years old when he painted the piece, he depicts himself as gaunt, sallow, and fragile—a man who looks 50, rather than an energetic young fellow at the outset of his career. A spectrum of dusty, dark blues saturate the subject and the backdrop he stands against, while his face is an icy bluish-white, his coat a deep cobalt, and his eyes wells of navy. The overall impression is one of dejection: a tormented artist cast out of society.
Outcasts became Picasso’s favored subjects during his blue period. In addition to artists, these included other down-and-out people.
It’s easy to think of Pablo Picasso as almighty: a painter who changed the course of art history, who unabashedly made art in his boxers, and who responded to questions from critics by firing a gun into the air.
But the late Spanish artist wasn’t always so confident or successful. In fact, his early years were fraught with poverty, tragedy, and emotional frailty—and it was these struggles that he channelled into his first pioneering body of work, known as his Blue Period, beginning in 1901.
Picasso had struggled with a series of other deaths in his life. In 1895, his seven-year-old sister Conchita died of diptheria, and in 1899, the painter Hortensi Guell, a member of Picasso’s circle in Barcelona, threw himself off a cliff.
Picasso’s grief for his sister, friends, and painter-hero mingled with his own internal creative conflicts. By early 1901, he hadn’t yet found a unique artistic voice—nor had he sold enough work to support himself. Together, these crises troubled Picasso and “formed a pattern of events suggesting that artists—at least those who live in opposition to mainstream society—are fated to suffering and tragedy,” as curator William H. Robinson pointed out.
Picasso identified with this plight, as a 1901 self-portrait made clear. While he was only 20 years old when he painted the piece, he depicts himself as gaunt, sallow, and fragile—a man who looks 50, rather than an energetic young fellow at the outset of his career. A spectrum of dusty, dark blues saturate the subject and the backdrop he stands against, while his face is an icy bluish-white, his coat a deep cobalt, and his eyes wells of navy. The overall impression is one of dejection: a tormented artist cast out of society.
Outcasts became Picasso’s favored subjects during his blue period. In addition to artists, these included other down-and-out people.
monochromatic.pdf |