PICK - A - SO ; simply, the Greatest!

Picasso was a prolific artist. He changed his visual styles many times.

I really admire his courage and his ability to push the boundaries of his craft instead of just getting complacent with a style that sells/established him as a known artist.

Portrait of an Old Fisherman

When Picasso began painting, he created excellent realist works, for example he painted the "Portrait of an Old Fisherman" at age of 14

However, it's imperative that an artist - any artist - develop a distinctive style of his own that is appropriate for, and reflective of the time in which he works. So Picasso went on from classic realism to play around with several other styles. There was a Blue Period and during this phase, he was still working essentially realistically, although his subjects and backgrounds had become somewhat more stylized, as you can see, from "The Tragedy", an example of the period.

The Tragedy

And then, in 1914, Picasso attended a show of African masks in Paris. That flipped a major artistic switch for him, and resulted in "Demoiselles d'Avignon". In this painting, Cubism became allied with African masks and figuration and sculptural dimensions. The women seem angry and primitive, they confront the viewer head-on, with no traditional use of painting perspective.

This work caused a huge uproar when it was first viewed, and western Art was never the same, because no one had ever conceived of combining all of these elements, being this "rude" and composing in this manner.

Demoiselles d'Avignon

About the fact that many people find his styles scary and bizarre, some of his paintings were meant to make you feel that way. One of his most famous paintings "Guernica" was his response to a tragedy that happened in a village in Spain. He masterfully depicted the violence and disturbing nature of the event.

Art is about sharing what's inside of a human soul with the language of aesthetics. What the artist wants to share could be "beautiful" or "ugly", which would dictate how it's represented through art.

Guernica