Picasso . . . because

Because

you saw something different

so long ago, a collection of African masks

at an exhibit in Paris,

art slid sideways

into the new.

All your classical training,

the blue period, the rose period, 

transformed.

You challenged yourself

to make images

never before seen.

Called decadent, the scribblings of a child,

you did not care.

You made art.

After the bombing of civilians at Guernica,

you made art.

Pablo Picasso, "Guernica" (1937, Wikipedia)

Sometimes we see something or understand something without knowing how or what is involved. The painting "Guernica" with its call to protest and to remember that bombing of a civilian town by the Germans in 1937 was my first introduction to Picasso. 

So when we spent a month in Paris already ten years ago, we visited a small studio on the Left Bank where Picasso once lived. We saw for ourselves where he painted "Guernica," the very room not quite big enough for the scale of this painting; the canvas so large it had to be tilted at an angle to fit into his studio.

Picasso's studio is now a tiny museum filled with paintings, drawings, and sculptures, even including his clay cups, created in amazingly diverse forms. We also visited the larger Picasso Museum with a very formal array of paintings from every period. Even today, I marvel at his creativity and his growth as an artist.

Read more about Picasso's studio and the Picasso Museum or visit the Picasso Museum in Paris at Wikipedia