The answer might surprise you…
Who was Picasso?
Pablo Picasso is one of the most famous artists to ever live. He’s credited with inventing cubism, along with Georges Braque.
Picasso birth city, birthdate, and country
Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881. His birthdate is important to note, as we will reveal the date of the first recognized abstract painting.
Blessed with talent and a built-in mentor
We should all hope to be as lucky as Picasso, to have been born with extraordinary talent. But talent has to be nurtured and guided. His true luck was having a father and mentor that was an accomplished art teacher.
Beginning of the departure from Realism
Young Pablo was painting museum quality realist paintings by the time he was 13.
He continued painting in a semi-realist style during his blue period of 1901-1904. The blue period so defined by paintings that were mostly created using blue pigment. This blue paint reflecting the sadness of having lost his best friend to suicide.
The Cubist breakthrough
Around 1907, Picasso created what is widely considered to be the first Cubist painting, “Demoiselles d’Avignon”.
He continued to paint artworks in the Cubist style for another 10 years, until 1917.
Art historians consider Cubism to be a great influencer for future abstract works of art. Although most Cubist art distorted reality to an extent, it did not depart completely from figuration. When viewing the art, you could make out that it was based on people and objects from the material world.
A brief period of pure abstraction
In an attempt to depict the immaterial world, Picasso created several purely abstract paintings during the summer of 1910. He then gave up on pure abstraction, claiming that it was impossible for him. Picasso claimed that his art must have some visible connection to figuration.
But was Picasso the first abstract artist?
If we’re talking about purely abstract art that is not in any way representational, then the answer is no.
The honor of being recognized as the very first abstract artist has to go to Hilma af Klint.
Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944) was producing abstract paintings as early as 1906, several years before Picasso experimented with pure abstraction. According to her wishes, her works were not publicly displayed until 20 years after her death. Several paintings were shown in a 1986 exhibition in Los Angeles, entitled “The Spiritual in Art”.
Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866-1944), known as the father of abstraction, publicly created “Untitled (First Abstract Watercolor)” in 1910.
Picasso was very much at the avant garde when it came to abstract art in the beginning, but was not the first abstract artist. Nor was he an important figure in the non-representational art movement.