The Old Guitarist

The Old Guitarist is an oil painting by Pablo Picasso created in 1903. It depicts an old, blind, haggard man with threadbare clothing weakly hunched over his guitar, playing in the streets of Barcelona, Spain. It is currently on display in the Art Institute of Chicago. At the time of The Old Guitarist’s creation, Modernism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Symbolism had merged and created an overall movement called Expressionism, which greatly influenced Picasso’s style. Furthermore, El Greco, Picasso’s poor standard of living, and the suicide of a dear friend... influenced Picasso’s style at the time, which came to be known as his Blue Period. Several x-rays, infrared images, and examinations by curators revealed three different figures hidden behind the old guitarist. Pablo Picasso was born in 1881, an extremely chaotic, ever-changing, and unstable era where the Industrial Revolution, Darwinism, and Marxism ran rampant. Every single one of these forces accentuated the world’s impermanence and the fleeting nature of the present. These forces affected art and created an artistic period called Modernism, which strove to capture reality in its elusive and impermanent nature.
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