PICASSO, DEATH AND HUMAN SUFFERNING

Picasso was terribly effected by his friend Casagmas' death.  Casagmas was a Catalan artist and constant companion of Picasso in Paris. Casagmas committed suicide over a love affair gone awry. For Picasso it was the loss of a great personal friend at a young age.  

Pablo Picasso    Death of Casagmas  from google image

"Picasso continually attempted to exorcise the pain and guilt he experienced as a result of the death of Carles Casagemas; this struggle with mortality, human suffering, and pain was a constant theme throughout the continuing decades of Picasso's art. Many of his Blue Period works deal both directly and allegorically with these conflicts. Throughout his life, Picasso sought redemption from the issues of human mortality by creating a vast world of sexuality, strength, and virility. The specter of death, and his need for redemption and survival, haunted Picasso into his 90s." from Neurosurgery News

Pablo Picasso             La Mort de Casagmas
from google image

Picasso went into a deep depression after the death of his friend.  It was then he started painting with green and blue paint and his subject matter depicted mans struggle with mortality and suffering and pain. 


Picasso's Blue Period

A time depicting suffering

human suffering and depravity

La Vie                Pablo Picasso
from google image

Looking at death, suffering and pain in our lives is not easy.  Losing people when you are young and the promise of life is taken away so cruelly seems terribly unfair.  We cannot always reconcile these feelings within ourselves.  When a life is lost to suicide there is almost always a feeling that if I could have done something, if I could have reached out more, then I could have saved my friend.  Losing a loved one to violence leaves us often with a deep feeling of anger and bitterness.  How could anyone have done such a thing, how can people be so cruel and unfeeling? Death and suffering are never easy for any of us and yet we will all experience it at some point in our lives. 
Picasso takes his grief over his friends death and develops a language of symbols he uses over and over again the rest of his life.  The depression over his friends death also builds a deep compassion for suffering he sees in the human condition around him.  Picasso could have become bitter and angry, he could have remained in a severe depression, but instead he used the lesson of personal suffering into that of exploration of suffering for all humans.