Picasso's Old Guitarist

Pablo Picasso’s Old Guitarist
I visited the Art Institute of Chicago and many paintings and pieces of art caught my eye, but I almost lost my breath when I laid my eyes upon Picasso’s The Old Guitarist. I was a good thing that a bench is in front of the painting because I needed to sit down and admire the power that it exuded. The painting is one-dimensional, is flat, and doesn’t have a distinct background to it. It is done in a monochromatic color scheme and depicts a very thin, frail, blind man holding a guitar, which is brown and departs from the blue monochromatic color scheme, who is sitting cross legged and the upper half of his body is bent over. This man holds the guitar very close to him as if he didn’t have anything else in the world, which by the looks of him he is poor and might not have any possessions. The painting is part of the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection and is located in Gallery 391A. The Old Guitarist is an oil on canvas painting with the dimensions of 122.9 x 82.6 cm. Pablo Picasso is a Spanish painter and painted it in late 1903 to early 1904. The time period this painting was completed was of great importance because it marked the climax and the closing of Picasso’s blue period.
Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 and passed away on April 8, 1973. Not only was he a Spanish painter, but he was a sculptor and draughtsman as well. He is one of the most recognized figures in 20th century art. Picasso’s father was an art instructor, so he was trained as an artist as a very young man. He left Spain and went to live in Paris, France. In France he had to struggle to figure where he fit into the society of artists there. Because he identified with those struggling to survive, he began to paint pictures of the downtrodden, depicting them in all of their misery and using different shades of blue – the color of melancholy. His personal sadness intensified due to the suicide death of his close friend, Casagemas. The period of... [continues]

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