By: JESSICA RHOADES
Staff Writer
The Blue Period is a term used to define the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904 when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. These works, which are inspired by Spain and painted in Barcelona and Paris, are now some of his most popular works, although he had difficulty selling them at the time. In the later part of 1901, Picasso sank into a severe depression due to his friend committing suicide, and blue tones began to dominate his paintings. These Blue Picasso paintings frequently feature stark representations of humanity’s neglected or rejected individuals, many of whom he found in Paris’s jails, alleys, and ditches, including prostitutes, street children, and beggars. One encounter that had a significant impact on Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period paintings was a trip to a prison for women.
Picasso’s depression didn’t end at the beginning of his rose period, which succeeded in the blue period and in which the color pink dominates many of his paintings. In fact, it lasted until the end of his cubist period (which followed the rose period), and only in the period thereafter, which was his neo-classicist period, did Picasso’s work begin the show the playfulness that would remain a prominent feature of his work for the rest of his life. Picasso’s contemporaries didn’t even distinguish between a blue and a rose period but regarded the two as one single period.