What is net movement?

What caused Picasso's Blue Movement?

• I'm doing an art project on Picasso, and i'm focusing on his Blue Movement so i need to know: What started the Blue Movement? When did the Blue Movement Start? What is The Blue Movement? If any of these could be answered i'd be very grateful, or any other information any one has about The Blue Movement would be helpful. Thanks

• Answer:

  The Blue Period (Spanish: Periodo Azul) is a term used to define to the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. These somber works, inspired by Spain but painted in Paris, are now some of his most popular works, although he had difficulty selling them at the time. This period's starting point is uncertain; it may have begun in Spain in the spring of 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year. In choosing austere color and sometimes doleful subject matter—prostitutes, beggars and drunks are frequent subjects—Picasso was influenced by a journey through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas, who took his life at the L’Hippodrome Café in Paris, France by shooting himself in the right temple on February 17, 1901. Although Picasso himself later recalled, "I started painting in blue when I learned of Casagemas's death", art historian Hélène Seckel has written: "While we might be right to retain this psychologizing justification, we ought not lose sight of the chronology of events: Picasso was not there when Casagemas committed suicide in Paris ... When Picasso returned to Paris in May, he stayed in the studio of his departed friend, where he worked for several more weeks to prepare his exhibition for Vollard". The works Picasso painted for his show at Ambroise Vollard's gallery that summer were generally characterized by a "dazzling palette and exuberant subject matter". In the latter part of 1901, blue tones began to dominate his paintings. He painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie, painted in 1903 and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904), which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, also represented in The Blindman's Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other frequent subjects include female nudes and mothers with children.