Carlos Casagemas

Pablo Picasso, La Vie 1903, Cleveland Museum of Art. From 1901 to 1903, during his Blue Period Picasso painted several posthumous portraits of his friend Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie.^[1]

Carlos Casagemas (1881 in Barcelona – 17 February 1901 in Paris, France) was a Spanish art student and poet, best known for his friendship with Pablo Picasso. Picasso and Casagemas first met at the Barcelona café Els Quatre Gats. In 1901, the two friends moved from Barcelona to Paris. Casagemas shot himself because of an unrequited love for Germaine Pichot.^[2] Pichot was later one of the models depicted in Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon.^[3]

References

1. Wattenmaker, Richard J.; Distel, Anne, et al. (1993). Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-40963-7 p. 304.
2. The Guardian, Jonathan Jones, The Three Dancers, Pablo Picasso (1925)
3. Tully, Judd (November 16, 1989). "$40.7 Million For Picasso Work;$269 Million Sale at Sotheby's". The Washington Post. via HighBeam Research. Retrieved 9 May 2012. (subscription required)

External links

• The Death of Casagemas: early Picasso, the Blue Period, mortality, and redemption from National Institutes of Health website