Picasso... The Destroyer-Artist?

Picasso... has he misled the world with this bewildered gaze?...

Picasso has entered a new year... leaving behind him seventy-five years brimming with vitality and activity, and with inventive, creative production...

In the pictures taken of him lately, his expressive glances arrest you, and you wonder: what does he mean by those glances?... What more does he want to say...? Has he misled the world with his art?... Is he truly the greatest artist of this age, or merely a passing mocker?...

In the city of "Málaga," in Spain, Picasso was born; in his youth he traveled to Paris, where he received some of the fundamentals of art. At first he was unable to sell a single canvas of his paintings, whereas today he resides in an elegant villa on the Riviera shore, and from its terrace governs the world of art; whatever he makes, the critics account it the production of a genius, buyers pay him fantastic prices for it, and the exhibitions he holds of his paintings are thronged with spectators and critics...

Picasso revolted against the traditional measures in art, and staggered the world with canvases that might be called ugly...

His painting "The Dove of Peace" was a symbol of Communism's call to peaceful coexistence, and with it he expresses, at the same time, his pain over the fate of that coexistence...

And you ask yourself, as you review his paintings: is he the genius of the art of this age, or merely an amusing clown?...

Picasso adores destruction — the destruction of standards, of measures, of tastes... Taste sets limits on genius, and so do measures, in his opinion... The strange thing is that he began in the classical manner, painting faces and cafés and fields and trees; in this period he made much use of blue mixed with green; then he passed on to the period of bright rosy colors, and visited Spain, where he set about contemplating the architecture of the houses; and he passed to the next period of his artistic course: to Cubist art, with which he produced his famous painting, "The Russian Ballet," in 1918.

After he married, the artist traveled to Italy, and there devoted himself to production — but in a new phase, known in the language of art as Surrealism, which is the free expression of thoughts and dreams not governed by logic... Then he revolted against everything, and proceeded in destructive creation, placing the eye in the head or in the leg, and perhaps looking afterward at his canvas and saying: it would be more fitting for the eye to be in the right foot!!

And after all this, the world of art asks itself whether this man has deceived it?...

Today, in his seventy-fifth year, Picasso is still full of vitality and activity, and he lately decided to devote himself to decorating pottery and "ceramics" in that same strange manner of his. The owner of a pottery works who lives next door to "Picasso" said, after contemplating one of his vases: If one of the workers in my factory had made this, I would have dismissed him from his job on the spot!!

Many have passed through the history of art who lived their lives without appreciation, leaving their production to the judgment of the future... And so shall Picasso remain...