#musée national picasso

Pablo Picasso - The Death of Casagemas (1901)

- Picasso was twenty years old, when his good friend Carles Casagemas commited suicide in 1901, so he painted this masterpiece in memory of him. After this experience he started the blue period.

Pablo Picasso - The Barefoot Girl (1895)

- Picasso had not yet turned fourteen when he painted this portrait of a young Galician girl, one of his first oil paintings. Following the example set by the masters of the Spanish Golden Age (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries), such as José de Ribera or Francisco de Zurbarán, Pablo painted portraits of ordinary people and attractive models, like this girl with bare feet and a sad pout. A simple pose, a neutral background, an empty space lit from above are all features of naturalism. In his anatomical construction, however, Picasso demonstrates a mannerist touch.
You can see this barefoot girl, who is watched and watching at the same time. This girl is the fisrt incarnation of the theme of sitting woman in Picasso’s art, which sometimes disappears and later shows up again.