ESL Discussion

    Art world mourns Picasso

     Pablo Picasso died in the south of France,aged 91.

  Colleagues in the art world described him as the man who invented modern painting ,the greatest painter of the century and among the great painters of all time.

Picasso died of a heart attack in his 35-room country home near the small town of Mougins ,after a lingering illness.

Among mourners in Picasso's mansion, Notre Dame de Vie, were his wife,his son and his other only child of his first marriage to Russian dancer Olga  Kolkova. 

 He was a pioneer of cubism and most controversial artist of the century,had lived in exile in France since the Spanish Civil War of 1936- 39,vowing he would never return to his native Spain until the republic was restored there.

He had always been painting and the reaction of many people in France and abroad on hearing of his death was one almost  of surprise to learn he was immortal.

Giacomo Manzu  ,a personal friend of the painter, said in Rome Picasso was "the man who invented modern painting".

He was born on October 25th,1881,at Malaga.He first went to Paris in 1990 and settled there in 1904.His first years in Paris were those of his "Blue  period" when blue predominated in his melancholic pictures of sorrowful,hungry people.

In 1907 he painted"Les Demoiselles d' Avignon" .This was his first step towards cubism,of which he was the pioneer and master.

He produced anti-war pictures like'Korean  Massacres" and two great panels "War and Peace".

He also designed the dove symbol-the famous"Dove of Peace" for the communist-led World Peace Congress in Paris in 1948.

NOTES

lingering:lasting a long time

pioneer:someone who begins or initiates a movement or style

cubism: an art style in which things are represented as geometrical shapes

USING INFORMATION FROM THE STORY,CAN YOU WRITE POSSIBLE QUESTIONS TO WHICH THESE PHRASES COULD BE THE ANSWERS?

• in the South of France
• a heart attack
• cubism
• because blue predominated in his pictures
• near Mougins