Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse sample essay

Pablo Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is a wonderful piece of art, and the style in which the picture is painted is very typical of Picasso. The artist completed the picture in the beginning of the previous century, in 1907, and used oil on canvas. Generally, Pablo Picasso is famous for unnaturally distorted figures in his paintings of that year, and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is a great example. The picture is now hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The second painting that I would like to discuss is Henri Matisse’s The Green Line. This picture was painted two years earlier than Picasso’s, in 1905. Just like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse used oil on canvas when painting the picture. The contrasting style of the picture is typical for the painter. Now the painting is hanging in Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born in 1881 in Spain. His first drawings appeared when the young artist was only seven. That was the time when the genius in him was rising. His early pictures of childhood “could never be have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings,” says the artist himself. However, the pictures that Picasso painted at the age of fifteen have become very famous.

It is impossible to state that Pablo Picasso’s pictures are all painted in one particular style. During the period from 1895 to 1900 he preferred to paint realistically, portraying objects the way the actually were. However, later objects in his works have started to become more and more distorted. As time went by, young Picasso was turning from realism to surrealism and backward. The major difference can be traced between his works of year 1906 and 1907. Vast majority of pictures painted before (and including) 1906 depict objects in more-or-less realistic form. Although the artist did add his unique charm to the pictures, and distorted the object slightly, they all could be identified with realism, I suppose. Later paintings, on the other hand, testify that Pablo Picasso had changed his style completely. He turned to something that I would call a mixture of cubism, modernism, and impressionism. The lines have become less smooth, and the colors more contrastive, especially the in light-shade spots. Pablo Picasso had quit paying attention to volume, and painted convex plains in a single color.

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is a great example of his neo-cubism, modernism, and impressionism. The girls depicted in the picture are all distorted immensely. Proportions of their limbs are all incorrect (although this word is irrelevant here, I have compared the girls’ proportions to real humans). Their square breast and dumb eyes testify that Pablo Picasso attempted to challenge material reality, and present it in his own impressions, at least this is how I understand the picture.

Hanri Matisse lived in the same time with Pablo Picasso. He was born in France in 1869, twelve years earlier than Picasso, but Matisse began painting rather late. His first artworks he painted at the age of 28. Matisse’s most paintings are great examples of expressionism. However, some of his works are considered to relate to another movement, referred to as fauvism.

Generally, Henri Matisse preferred bright colors mixed within one artwork. However, the styles of portraits that Matisse painted differ from the style in which landscapes are painted. While portraits are dark and monotonous, hie landscapes are bright and colorful.

What is typical of Matisse is that he does not pay much attention to details. He most of the time uses thick, harsh strokes; sometimes even too large, I reckon. The painter uses thick stroke to paint very thin objects; for example seams on the shirt are far too thick. Such examples are noticed throughout the picture. Another outstanding characteristic of the painting is the contrast. Changes from light to dark, from colorless to colorful are too sharp, and therefore too visible. Generally, I would call the picture even slovenly. The colors of the painting are controversial in some spots; the hair I dark blue, and the nose is green. At first glance the mixture of colors and strokes seem clumsy, but in reality behind them great skill and creativity cloaks.

The two paintings discussed above are similar in several characteristics. Namely, both pictures portray the objects in a distorted manner. Both pictures look somewhat slovenly; colors are used inappropriately (irrelevant point in art though). The main differences between these paintings include the presence of volume. While Pablo Picasso purposefully avoids giving relief to the girls by means of smooth darkening (although some minor spots are spatial), Henri Matisse does draw darker lines closer to edges, sometimes even too dark and thick. Another major difference in style is usage of paint: Matisse’s strokes are vivid and thick, and changes in color are visible, while Pablo Picasso prefers smoother colors, and fills large parts of the painting with the same color. The last but not the least difference is the degree of right proportions used in the picture. Matisse adheres reality, but Picasso tries to brake it with surreal lines.
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