Who? Pablo Picasso ( ), Spanish painter & sculptor

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1 Who? Pablo Picasso ( ), Spanish painter & sculptor What? Still Life with Chair Caning; (11 2/5 x 14 3/5 ), oil paint on oil cloth over canvas edged with rope When? 1912 Where is it now? Musee National Picasso, Paris, France Why is this artist/artwork important? Picasso is considered to be one of the greatest artists of all time. He was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, photographer, ceramicist, and set designer. He is most famous for co- founding the movement called Cubism (artists sought to depict objects from multiple points of view simultaneously). Still Life with Chair Caning is a form of early collage art or Synthetic Cubism. It is called Synthetic Cubism because the artist is putting together different materials. In this case Picasso added items to the surface of the work besides paint: cloth, rope, etc.

2 Background Information - - Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in His father was an artist, who recognized his son s extraordinary artistic talent when he was a young boy and encouraged him to continue his studies at the top art school in Barcelona. - - In 1900, Picasso moved to Paris, where he became close friends with the most innovative artists, writers and musicians of the period (One of his close friends was Gertrude Stein. Picasso studied the works of the Post- impressionists and Symbolists at shown at big exhibitions and small galleries. He experimented with different styles during the early years of the 20 th century ( Blue Period, his paintings were mostly blue and depicted sad subjects, Rose Period, his paintings were more cheerful and he used a lot of pink) - - He was close friends with the French artist Georges Braque. Picasso and Braque began experimenting on ways in which artists could view objects from multiple perspectives. The result was Cubism. For example: Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde (1910). This kind of cubism was really hard to understand. They also made a more playful form of cubism, in which they added materials, such as newspaper clippings, to the surfaces of their pictures (now known as collage). This was really new. They were adding non- art materials, newspapers and advertisements (items that they did not physically make, but were commercially manufactured), to a piece of fine art (painting). Still- Life with Chair Caning is a great example of this kind of play. - Although the painting looks like a jumble of unrelated things, it is a still life that depicts objects on a French café table.

3 Discussion questions: - What do you see in this painting? Locate some of the items (a knife cutting a lemon, a napkin, a wine glass, word JOU meaning play or Journal as in newspaper in French, a pipe, a piece of oil cloth painted to look like chair caning, and a table all enclosed by a rope. - - Note how he used painting, drawing and collage at the same time. - - Picasso s collages raised questions about what is art: Does the artist have to physically make all the objects in the picture or can the artist take scraps of material and put them in the work? - - Why do you think of this method of creating a picture? For more information:

4 Project idea: Have the children make their own still life collage. Materials: Construction paper Pieces of rope or twine long enough to create outline of a large oval or square to frame the piece.(have one for each child in the class) Glue, pencils, and markers. An assortment of advertisements and articles cut out from magazines and/or newspapers. Instructions: - - Have the students glue a piece of rope or twine onto a piece of construction paper to create the outline of a desktop like in Picasso s collage. The outline can be oval, square or rectangle. - - Working within the outlined space, students will make a still- life collage, by combining newspaper and magazine clippings with their own drawings and writing. They can also draw or write on paper, cut it out and past it on to the picture. - - The picture can be anything they want that relates to something they might find on a desk. They could also simply do a tabletop or any other theme they like.

5 Comparative Images: Portrait of Picasso, 1933 (Photograph by Man Ray) Drawing by Picasso in 1892 (He was 11 years old)

6 Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde, 1910 Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music and Violin (1912) another example of collage from the period.