Picasso, Part 1 - 1890's in Training

 

When it comes to the art of Picasso, I find myself attracted to two disparate segments of his career.

Probably because of my affinity for nude males, those would be his academic nudes he did in training in the 1890's and his line drawings of nude males in the early 1930's.  So today we will look at those two periods, along with some male nude photography done at the same time.  This painting of a black male was done in 1897, near the end of Picasso's academic work.

Man with cane

Picasso paid attention to detail in the academic painting of a man from the rear.

Note the careful shading and shadows, as well as the back of the head.

 

1895

Is it just me, or does the head on this beautifully drawn male body simply not fit?  I'm not saying some man couldn't have actually looked that way, but it looks like two different men to me.

 

Picasso, Part 2 - 1930's

Now we jump ahead three and a half decades, and Picasso is doing some nice line drawings

 of healthy looking nude men in small groups.  I like these . . . a lot.

 

Relaxed

Here we see a group of relaxed and pleasant looking men as drawn by Picasso in 1931.

I wish I knew the story here.  They look like a group of Classical Greeks.

 

Art Friday, Part 2 - Picasso

We don't really think of Picasso in terms of male nude painting, but he did some, especially in the early or "academic" part of his career.  Did the adolescent artist show himself at work in the background of this 1896 drawing?  It would be just like the cheeky Picasso to do so.

"Academic Realism" was actually a genre of painting popular in the 1890's, 

and under the tutelage of his father, Picasso produced this work in 1896 at age 15.  

My source dated this beefy Picasso derriere drawing as 1896.

Picasso did a number of these line drawings in the 1930's.  This is from '33.

This 1942 Picasso work features three rather differently shaped men.