L acrobate de picasso biography

Femme acrobate

1930

69x59 cm

Malaga, Museo Picasso

In winter 1929, Picasso returned to the theme Acrobats of the Rose Period and created six paintings on this theme. The first work of the series was "A Blue Acrobat" (1929-1930). Also there were some fantastic paintings such as "The Minotaur" (1928) and "The Swimmer" (1929). A possible visual source was a less well-known image of a female figure in the Temple of Hathor, which is part of the Dendera Temple complex (Egypt). This image was in the book belonging to the artist: a naked female figure in the form of a bridge. Most likely, the original inspiration for the series "Acrobats" appeared after the artist visited The Cirque Medrano.

There are also 1924-1925 drawings depicting female dancers. This unnatural figure - without the usual center, with face opposite to buttocks, scattered legs and parallel hands - refers to the figures of revolution, such as the swastika. In addition, the artist seems to give the viewer the freedom in determining the top and the bottom, and this feature is also present in some other works. The light figure against the dark background is enclosed in a thick black outline, which enhances the effect of the acrobat’s weightlessness. In 1929, a discussion on whether Picasso was a Surrealist or not was provoked. These paintings seem to be a good confirmation, but the artist himself later said that he "has never been out of reality." The French writer and ethnologist Michel Leiris denied any Picasso’s connection with the Surrealists and argued that "his creatures excite and attract because of their reality."

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Summary of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was the most dominant and influential artist of the first half of the 20 century. Associated most of all with pioneering Cubism, alongside Georges Braque, he also invented collage and made major contributions to Symbolism and Surrealism. He saw himself above all as a painter, yet his sculpture was greatly influential, and he also explored areas as diverse as printmaking and ceramics. Finally, he was a famously charismatic personality; his many relationships with women not only filtered into his art but also may have directed its course, and his behavior has come to embody that of the bohemian modern artist in the popular imagination.

Accomplishments

• It was a confluence of influences - from Paul Cézanne and Henri Rousseau, to archaic and tribal art - that encouraged Picasso to lend his figures more structure and ultimately set him on the path towards Cubism, in which he deconstructed the conventions of perspective that had dominated painting since the Renaissance. These innovations would have far-reaching consequences for practically all of modern art, revolutionizing attitudes to the depiction of form in space.
• Picasso's immersion in Cubism also eventually led him to the invention of collage, in which he abandoned the idea of the picture as a window on objects in the world, and began to conceive of it merely as an arrangement of signs that used different, sometimes metaphorical means, to refer to those objects. This too would prove hugely influential for decades to come.
• Picasso had an eclectic attitude to style, and although, at any one time, his work was usually characterized by a single dominant approach, he often moved interchangeably between different styles - sometimes even in the same artwork.
• His encounter with Surrealism, although never transforming his work entirely, encouraged not only the soft forms and tender eroticism of portraits of his mistress Marie-Therese Walter, but also the starkly angular i

This painting shows off the spontaneous agility of the acrobat's body. Pablo Picasso is the initiator of biomorphism, which is pioneered by fellow Spaniard Joan Miro. But Miro goes further by using neo-Neolithic shapes to define new spatial concepts of freedom and rejected Cubist space. But on the other hand, Picasso's exploration of surrealism maintained the human form and identity.

In this painting, The Acrobat, Picasso depicted the human figure with the cube of the frame despite the apparent freedom of movement. The figure is also maintained by the colors, which controls the motion of the body. It seems the body shape is locked within a white form and then pinioned against the implied stasis of the black background. This painting is a good proof of the paradox of movement and rigidity.

This figure seems like a male but we cannot be sure since in that period there are so many works are disfigurations of the female form. Since most of Surrealist works contain some sexual reference or punning, so it's possible this weird, dangling phallic hand is similar to the pendulous penile limb formations of painting Woman in an Armchair.