Picasso's Prolonged Adolescence, Blue Period, and Blind Figures

Abstract

This paper explores early issues of separation-individuation, unconscious conflict, and trauma, revived and reworked in Picasso's turbulent protracted adolescence. During this critical period Picasso traveled between Barcelona and Paris four times, from age 19 to 23. His melancholic mood, related both to separation conflict and the current realities of his uprooted life and emerging career, was expressed in his painting of emaciated, despondent figures, the predominance of monochromatic blue, and his choice of social outcasts as subjects. Of particular significance are his paintings of blind persons. Separation and loss, his depressive disposition, and his choice of blind subjects were psychologically interrelated. Picasso's developmental transformation from adolescence to adulthood, marked by his finally settling in Paris, encompassed change in his personal and artistic identity.