A tragic story from the painting “Girl on a Ball” by Pablo Picasso. How Pablo Picasso's "Girl on a Ball" works Pablo Picasso's works "Girl on a Ball"

The Pushkin Museum in Moscow has many wonderful paintings that capture the imagination of true art connoisseurs and ordinary sightseers. Artists Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Chagall - these names have forever entered the treasury of world painting. And “Girl on a Ball” (painting by Picasso) is one of those brilliant works in front of which you can stand spellbound for hours, enjoying the magical play of color and light, the amazing skill of the great artist. This picture is like a fairy tale that you want to believe in, despite any global complexities of human existence.

"Pink" period

Each work of a great artist has its own story. This picture is no exception. Young Pablo Picasso, settling in Paris at the beginning of the last century, comprehended the world of bohemia. In his poor art studio, even the water froze in winter - it was so cold. And in Montmartre there were frequent power cuts. But on the doors of the workshop there was an inscription “Meeting Place for Poets”, pleasing to the eye. The world of bohemia, rejected by ordinary people, firmly enters the life of Pablo Picasso. And the theme of kinship and human relations was in that period. The main characters, the heroes of the paintings, are traveling circus performers, comedians, artists and ballerinas, who, contrary to public taste, attracted the attention of young talent and aroused genuine participation and interest in him.

“Girl on a Ball”, painting by Picasso

At that time (1905), the artist was often inclined to choose the most ordinary subjects for his works. The heroes of this picture - wandering acrobats - capture the imagination of Pablo Picasso: a girl on a ball, fragile and tender, an athlete personifying masculinity and reliability. But the author does not simply copy life. He recreates it with his art and skill. And the work “Girl on a Ball” (a painting by Picasso from the “pink” period) is a vivid example of this! We seem to see dreams, love, devotion and tenderness, strength and courage. They need each other, since the work of traveling circus performers is dangerous and difficult, and they receive pennies for it.

Painting by Pablo Picasso “Girl on a Ball”: plot

The canvas depicts a seated adult male acrobat and a fragile girl gracefully balancing on a ball. It is in the contrast of these two figures, their plasticity and massiveness, grace and strength, that many critics see the highlight of the work. The theme of friendship, internal community and mutual assistance is also visible in the work. The artist is attracted by the language of contrasts and plasticity, which helps create harmony in the composition of the painting. After all, you must admit that if you imagine for a moment just a girl balancing, then without the silent support of a sitting circus performer she can instantly lose her balance, slipping off the ball. The man’s leg bent at a right angle is perceived figuratively as a kind of support for the girl’s fragile figure.

All the magic that permeates the work of the great master is also based on the magic of lighting, the harmony of colors, and the precision of strokes. It’s as if the figures have no feeling of constraint, and the space of the canvas is spread apart and filled with air. At the same time, the author also uses a coarsening of the texture of painting, a simplification of the style that appeared in earlier years.

Despite the apparent roughness of the image, the work conveys a light and gentle mood, described in pink and blue tones, with shades of ashen. These tones additionally create the impression of a romantic reality of life.

History of the painting after painting

It is known that Pablo Picasso was pleased in 1906 when the collector Vollard bought as many as 30 paintings from him for only two thousand francs. After this, the canvas was in both the famous collection and the Kahnweiler collection. Industrialist-collector and philanthropist Morozov bought it in 1913 for 16 thousand. So “Girl on a Ball,” a painting by Picasso, ended up in Russia, where it is still in the Pushkin Museum.

One of Picasso's most famous paintings.

In 1900, Picasso and his friend, the artist Casajemas, went to Paris.

It was there that Pablo Picasso became acquainted with the work of the Impressionists.

His life at this time was fraught with many difficulties, and the suicide of Carlos Casajemas deeply

had an effect on the young Picasso.

Under these circumstances, at the beginning of 1902, he began to produce works in a style that would later be called the Blue Period.

Picasso developed this style upon his return to Barcelona in 1903-1904.

A work of the transition period - from “blue” to “pink” - “Girl on a Ball” 1905.
In the work of Pablo Picasso, the painting “Girl on a Ball” opens the so-called “pink period”,

which replaced “blue” and still retains its echoes. .

The painting “Girl on a Ball” does not belong to Cubism (as is known, Picasso is the founder of Cubism).

Truly a picture of a transitional period. The classification is complex, it can be attributed to the Art Nouveau style.

On the canvas “Girl on a Ball” Picasso depicted a traveling troupe of acrobats.

In the center of the composition are two artists - a girl gymnast and a strongman.

A child balances on a ball, rehearsing his routine.

The girl's figure is gracefully curved, she raised her arms to maintain her fragile balance.

The athlete sits motionless, his powerful body filled with calm.

The two artists stand in stark contrast to each other.

On the one hand, the fragility and impulsiveness of a thin girl on a ball, and on the other, the strength, power and static character of a man sitting on

Picasso's main means of expression remains line.

But unlike the paintings of the “blue” period, here we also see perspective. In the canvas “Girl on a Ball” is built using

several horizontal lines and small figures in the background (a woman with a child and a snow-white horse). Because of this

the picture does not look flat, it has lightness and airiness.

An image of a bare desert or steppe is selected as the background. This setting doesn't really fit the mood of the circus.

Thus, the artist emphasizes that the life of these people does not consist only of fun, rejoicing and applause from the audience.

There is also need, grief, illness.

The color scheme chosen by the artist is also very characteristic.

The blue color, so beloved by Picasso, remained only in the clothes of athletes and gymnasts.

The rest of the picture is dominated by shades of pink.

The picture is alive and very dynamic, How did the artist achieve such dynamics?

Let's look at the picture in detail, and, without invading the competence of art history, let's study visual solutions.
The first thing you can pay attention to is the contrast between the youth and plasticity of the girl and the experience and strength of the athlete. The ball on which the girl maintains her delicate balance is contrasted with a cubic circus prop on which the athlete sits.

Thus, there is contrast and conflict - not only between the two characters, but also the two states of a person that occur to him during his life, a conflict of generations.
Let us note that the conflict is not stated by the artist in the actions of the characters; in the picture the relationships are rather related, perhaps they are brother and sister, the girl is open, the athlete’s gaze is calm.
All this is quite obvious and well known.

Let's take a closer look.
The girl is drawn in cold colors, the athlete in warm colors.
Usually, cold tones visually characterize the character negatively and perhaps it looks strange for a pretty girl who was drawn by a great artist. But, if you remember your teenage period, didn’t we get into confrontation with adults on any occasion? Didn't they violate the rules established in society - formal and informal? This is a mechanism inherent in nature that destabilizes the social system as a whole, but, at the same time, pushes the boundaries of universal human perception.

There is anxiety in the colors with which the girl is drawn. This is her fear of losing balance, and the athlete’s anxiety for the girl, and the elder’s anxiety for the future of the young ones.

The girl's plasticity is contrastingly emphasized by the static, calm posture of the athlete. In the girl’s bends there is not only a desire to maintain balance, but also an impulsive character, a readiness for games and provocations; in the athlete’s gaze there is solidity and a readiness to catch and support; in the muscles and the athlete’s very pose there is strength and readiness for fast, dexterous movements.

The girl's direction is forward, towards the viewer, into the future. The athlete sits with his back to the viewer, the gaze of a mature man is turned to the past.
The emerging movement of time is emphasized by a little girl in a red dress; she logically completes the time within the picture - childhood, adolescence, maturity.

Now let's do some experiments.

Using a graphic editor, let’s change the girl’s tone to warm...

and also - we will remove people...

...and a horse in the background.

With each integration into the artist's original plan, the internal tension and movement of the painting decreases noticeably. The “disappearance” of the horse makes the landscape lifeless and deprives the picture of an important warm emotional component. A grazing horse is a uniform, peaceful, lively and warm movement. A little girl's dress fluttering in the wind is another important movement, light and airy. Deprived of these accents, the picture becomes a dry, almost documentary sketch, a sketch. And nothing in it provokes the viewer’s imagination to think about the passage of time, about the relationships between generations, about new trends and eternal values. The picture ceases to be a deep philosophical parable.

Try in your imagination to also remove the red bow on the girl’s head - the picture will “dry” completely.

After this, it is worth once again evaluating the artist’s decisions - seemingly simple - which “charged” the painting with internal energy, movement and plasticity.

source

Here's another opinion...

Everyone can see something different in this picture.

A person with positive emotions may see a positive meaning, but a person in a depressed mood will see something sinister in it.

This is also proven by the fact that a lot of caricatures and expressions of their vision of the picture were made of the picture.

Some people depict a nail on the ball instead of a girl, others a dog, or a bird, a naked woman - whatever.

There are even many sculptures dedicated to this painting. Many authors of sculptures wanted to embody a masterpiece of painting in stone or bronze, others in cartoon characters and caricatures.

The theme of the picture is in demand and continues to amaze people’s imagination.

According to official sources, the painting depicts the life of a traveling circus, a harlequin is sitting on a stone, and a girl from the younger generation is training for performances.

The man’s face is frowned and serious, he is thinking about something and is confident in himself. The girl is cheerful, carefree, but at the same time, it balances unsteadily on the ball.

In the picture, tenderness contrasts with rudeness, childish carelessness looks contrasting on the background
wisdom dejected by life experience. Movement is shown against a background of calm.

There is also concern for the younger generation, and at the same time, the man feels insecure about his own future. The man is slightly inclined, which shows his sadness, at the same time, the girl’s entire figure tends upward, her hands are directed, palms towards the sky, as a symbol of the desire for a happy future.

The location of the acrobats is in an open area, somewhere in the distance you can see a woman with a child and a horse.

The expanses are endless, with several horizons in the distance, like a symbol of freedom. The picture carries a deep meaning, where every detail is part of a single whole.

In 2012, a coin was issued in Russia, it depicted this particular painting by Pablo Picasso."

SEVEROV A, S,

What makes the strongest impression when looking at this picture is the contrast of heaviness and lightness. The canvas became a saga about balance, about the interaction of human temperaments. “Girl on a Ball” is Pablo Picasso’s reflections on the fate of art and the artist in general.

Plot

Circus performers rest during a break between endless performances. Thin as a line itself, the gymnast balances on the ball, repeating the number, the strongman calmly sits on the cube. An ordinary scene from circus life.

The contrast of the bodies is also enhanced by the difference in the bases: the ball is an extremely unstable figure with a single point of support, while the cube is in contact with the entire base of the floor plane, which makes it as stable as possible.

Girl on the Ball. (wikipedia.org)

Picasso, in whose head in 1905 the ideas of Cubism were just taking shape, in this work was already focused on form. It is through her that he expresses his ideas, his worldview. The color scheme is dominated by pink (the main color of this creative stage), but echoes of the previous, “blue” period are still heard, dedicated to the poor, the hardships of life, poverty and generally making a difficult impression (rich blue with its shades was used by the artist as a relay of sadness, hopelessness and emptiness).

On the horizon, Picasso depicted part of a traveling troupe, such as he saw in his childhood in his homeland. That’s why the landscape is so reminiscent of Spanish lands.

Context

Picasso’s “pink” period is associated with communication with circus performers. Having moved to Paris in 1904, he was in love with this city, with its hustle and bustle, with the gushing variety of ideas and events. Several times a week he visited the Medrano Circus, became acquainted with the artists and decided to paint a large canvas, “A Family of Acrobats.” In the process of work, he went far from the original idea.

Family of acrobats, 1905. (wikipedia.org)

What we know today as "The Girl on the Ball" was the boy's episode in "The Family of Acrobats," but the artist abandoned that part in the process. A separate episode was then turned into an independent work, with the boy becoming a girl.

Researchers suggest that when working on the balancing figure, Picasso took the sculpture of Johannes Goetz as a basis. Indeed, it is quite difficult to imagine that even the most skilled acrobat is able to stand on the ball for a long time.

"Boy Balancing on a Ball" by Johannes Goetz. (wikipedia.org)

Born into the family of an artist. It was the father who taught the child to draw, and quite early. By the age of 15, Pablo had already participated in city exhibitions in his native Malaga. It was clear that he had one path - to become an artist. Having studied in Madrid, but unable to cope with academic boredom, the young man went to Paris, where intellectual and creative color was then concentrated.

In Paris, Picasso experienced everything - from unbearable poverty to fabulous wealth. There were times when the woman he lived with couldn’t go outside because she simply didn’t have shoes. In Montmartre, many creative people lived this way, and many could not stand it.

"Guernica", 1937. (wikipedia.org)

He did not leave the house alone and always carried a weapon with him, because the area where he lived was infested with those who understood only the language of force. In those years, Picasso allowed himself everything - both in his work and in life. One mistress replaced another, relationships with men, alcohol, opium binges. He stopped using drugs when he saw the body of a German artist who had hanged himself in the studio. Picasso was afraid that one day, while intoxicated, he would cross the line of despair and also commit suicide.

Together with Georges Braque, they invented Cubism. Rejecting the traditions of naturalism, they wanted to more convincingly show the sense of space and heaviness of the masses. However, gradually they came down to puzzles that were almost impossible to solve. Picasso's later work always reflected what was happening: fashionable surrealists, political upheavals, wars, peacetime. Periods of creativity consistently follow changes in the global world.

"Algerian Women", version O, 1955. (wikipedia.org)

Picasso was brimming with energy. He had several wives, countless mistresses and lovers, legitimate and illegitimate children. Tens of thousands of works are attributed to him. No one can accurately assess the scale of his artistic heritage - the numbers vary from 20 thousand to 100 thousand paintings.

And after death he remains the most popular, the most expensive, the most prolific, the very Pablo Picasso.

Pablo Picasso leaves his homeland and settles in Paris. His life becomes brighter, more saturated with bright colorful images, and the “blue period” of his work gives way to the “pink period”.

Painting "Girl on the Ball" is the first creation and opens a new cycle of images created by the greatest artist of modern art.

The theme of the lower classes of society, outcasts, actors and circus performers was very popular in the visual arts with the advent of such a movement as naturalism.

People and their habitats were depicted frankly and in detail, the life of different populations was studied and depicted in art. The works were mostly very pessimistic.

Probably, in the circus and its actors, Picasso was most interested in the contrast: bright performances and the cruel life after them, the richness of flowers and colors and the poverty of the artists, the incredible popularity of the performance and the love of the public, bordering on contempt, as for the lowest strata of society.

At the same time, during the performances one could see contrasting numbers, in which large scary animals and light aerialists, huge strongmen, ridiculous clowns and terrible dwarfs took part. In his painting “Girl on a Ball,” Pablo Picasso tried to convey precisely this contrast—contrast in everything.

The profession of the two characters that occupy almost the entire canvas is quite easy to guess - they are circus performers. But they don't present a show full of colors and lights now.

They probably travel from one city to another and stop somewhere in a desert area where there are no people, no houses, no plants, no animals. Only in the distance one of the circus performers is walking with a black dog, and the white horse is trying to find at least some vegetation.

Such a landscape makes everyone feel sad; life seems very difficult, full of deprivation and poverty. Behind the brilliance and brightness are hidden hard, hungry everyday life. But skill must be maintained, and artists constantly rehearse their numbers.

A huge strongman athlete is resting, sitting on a cube, and a teenage girl is training. There are a lot of differences between these two characters. He is huge and powerful, with well-developed muscles, she is thin and fragile, with graceful lines and magnificent grace.

Another contrast between these circus performers is that he sits and rests. All his muscles are relaxed and the athlete is the personification of calm and solidity, while the girl’s pose is tense.

She is trying to stand on a large ball, and every cell of her body is in tension. At the same time, to emphasize the difference between these two polar people, Pablo Picasso places a ball and a cube.

The color scheme of the picture is also contrasting. The blue color, preferred by Picasso in the previous series of paintings, is visible only in the clothes of the girl and the athlete, and the basis is made up of various shades of pink.