Cubism - Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque

Cubism may not be the greatest artistic movement of contemporary art (my favourite movement of all art history is surrealism; Dalí and Magritte are like Gods to me, and I've even made some of their paintings myself), but still it makes up one of the most important and interesting parts of art history.

Pablo Picasso is certainly a model artist; he had this natural talent that not all painters had, and thus he created a lot of quite prolific, varied, and interesting works (I've made a couple of Picasso's too). When I was in Barcelona, we visited the little Picasso museum of the city in which they are basically exposed the early works of the Spaniard (although they had some paintings of this rose and blue period, and the series of 'Las Meninas'), and I must say that his first paintings are way different from his Cubist works that made him famous. I think Picasso shouldn't be judged only for his Cubist period, but for all his compilation of works.

Picasso's early works were usually featured by his dad. In 'Science and Charity',  If I remember correctly portraits the death of his mother (on the bed), his dad (on the left) and Picasso himself as a child (on the right carried by the nun). This painting is really an experience: Picasso had a some perspective errors, so if you see the painting from the centre  it looks normal (just as it looks in the photo), but as walk left the bed looks bigger an bigger.

Picasso's and Braque's Cubist painting are beautiful and interesting. Even though they may not seem to have a clear or a significant and relevant content, they do. For example, Picasso's 'Guernica' is response to the attacks in Guernica during the bloody Spanish Civil War and his 'Meninas' are a beautiful reference to Velazque's masterpiece. Both Picasso and Braque portrait daily life objects that were important not only for them, but for pretty much any artist (the guitar is a great example)... I don't think Cubist painting are senseless at all, they actually have a lot of subject-matters that still amaze people. Picasso, Braque, Gris, and all the other 'minor' Cubists painters have led a strong legacy to art, and I really appreciate them.
I think playing with shapes, although it may seem easy, is one of the most demanding techniques of paintings, and being able to translate  reality into a painting without portraying the objects exactly as they are is really difficult. When  I painted Picasso, I could recognized it was really easy to copy, but actually coming out with the idea of using the colours and the shapes of each painting is something that only a few artists can achieve.

As I've said before, Cubism isn't my favourite artistic movement, but I shouldn't be underrated either.

I painted this Picasso's

Picasso's 'Musicians' - My favourite from him

Miro's sculptures in Barcelona reminded of some Cubists sculptures!