Art critics speak of Picasso as if he were not so much an individual as an entire epoch. Thus they speak of his blue period, his rose period, his antique period and the like. Picasso is the undisputed master of the moderns.Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain. His first pictures were painted before he was fourteen, and he passed his entrance examinations at the Art School of Barcelona and later at Madrid by executing in a single day the subject for which a month’s work was allowed. In 1900 he went to Paris, and within ten years he had thoroughly explored and settled several areas of his vision and was launched on his cubist phase. By 1910 he had supplanted Matisse as the leader of the Paris school.
Gourmet was painted in 1901. Of interest here is the combination of color to create three-dimensional shapes. For instance, the little girl’s skirt varies from white, through blues and greens, to black. The result is rather novel: her dress looks almost like sculpted clay.
