A portrait of the artist as a young man
EXHIBITION ON SCREEN: YOUNG PICASSO, not rated, 90 minutes, Center for Contemporary Arts, 3.5 chiles
Director Phil Grabsky must be one of the hardest working documentarians out there. His Exhibition on Screen series, which began in 2012 with Leonardo from the National Gallery, London, numbers 23 films, and that’s not to mention his numerous productions on the great composers. By now the formula is well known, particularly for fans of the series. The filmmaker offers an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of institutions housing great works of art. He usually centers his narratives on some mystery or little-known details of the artists’ lives. The formula works, and Grabsky’s documentaries offer fresh perspectives for even the most jaded art history aficionados.
In the case of Young Picasso, Grabsky focuses on the early years of the Spanish painter, whose influence on generations of artists to follow has never flagged. A prolific artist up until the time of his death in 1973, his young life is not as well known to the layman. Even in his youth, he possessed a technical mastery of the medium of paint.
Born in 1881 in the city of Málaga, Spain, Picasso learned figure drawing and oil painting from his father, Don José Ruiz y Blasco, an academic painter who taught the young protégé to discipline himself by copying masterworks from art history. After the tragic death of his sister Conchita, who died of diphtheria at the age of seven, his family moved to Barcelona, where he was admitted into advanced classes at the School of Fine Arts. His family then sent him, at age sixteen, to study art at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.
It’s in these three cities that Grabsky focuses his attention, but it’s the intimate, close-up views of numerous works of art that really show off just how adept a painter Picasso was during his formative years and early professional life. Grabsky focuses on two early periods: the Blue Period, which is characterized by gaunt, despairing figures rendered in somber tones of blue and green; and the Rose Period, characterized by a lighter color palette and circus figures.
The documentary takes the viewer on tours inside the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, Musée National Picasso in Paris, and the Museo Picasso Málaga to flesh out the biography, while also relying on curators and art historians from those institutions to provide depth and insight into the artist’s skills. Rarely are we treated to the kind of access provided by the film. Young Picasso takes us all the way up to the creation of Picasso’s seminal composition, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), which was created when the artist was twenty-five and marked his turn to greatness. While the film does cover some familiar territory, the early years of Picasso are often overshadowed by his later periods. Here, they get their due.