Pablo Picasso’s Composition Techniques Explained Through 6 Works

Pablo Picasso was a man who made works in various styles. He was highly experimental, and if he wasn’t one of the most famous artists that ever lived, you’d be forgiven for thinking his body of work was created by a diverse group of artists. One of the things that combines all his different styles is a masterful approach to composition. He combined color, form, and structure in highly skilled ways. We can see this in each of his paintings.

Composition is all about how you combine all the elements that are part of a painting. The colors in this image are somber and it’s designed to portray sorrow. If blue was the only color used in the painting, it wouldn’t be as effective. There are flesh tones, but they are green. Picasso used color and structure to convey his own sorrow. The mood of the painting is clear and can be understood by the viewer. If you ask a child if this is a happy or sad painting, most children will understand that it is sad. By recognizing that emotion, you also acknowledge that Picasso successfully conveyed sorrow through clever composition.

The above diagram reduces the image to its basic structure. The shape on the top right shows the light area in the background. Without it, the composition wouldn’t be balanced. There would be too much light in the bottom half of the canvas. The flesh and man’s face are a focal point, and the painting requires a more even distribution of light to support that aspect of the composition.

The versatility of Picasso was one of the things that made him a genius. This painting has a completely different feel from the previous one. Its mood is light and playful. At first glance, the composition seems standard, yet it is more sophisticated than it first appears. The boy is shown from head to knee, meaning his body forms a backward L shape. The brown background enhances this, creating another backward L shape. Those shapes lead your eyes to focus on the upper left of the canvas. That is the focal point of the image. The light blue curves inside the brown and softens the backward L shape as your eyes move to that image section. There, we see the boy’s face gazing at the mirror.

When depicting a face, you choose where the model will look. It’s a 3-dimensional world being flattened into a 2-dimensional depiction. This means that a painting of a face looking in a specific direction will connect two places on the canvas. It creates an invisible line between the face and the mirror. When the viewer looks at the face, they follow the invisible line towards the mirror. The line doesn’t need to be drawn because we see it in our minds. People do this automatically, and you can tell from Picasso’s use of composition that he was aware of this.

In the diagram, the image is simplified to its basic structure. The boy’s left leg is slightly lifted, giving it a backward L shape, but the positioning of the color blue is somewhat diagonal. Something that’s emphasized by the positioning of the other leg. The blue in the lower part of the canvas is almost parallel to the invisible line between the face and the mirror.

This is one of Picasso’s most famous paintings. It’s an image influenced by African art, and its style differs from the previous image we looked at. The women’s faces almost turn into tribal masks. Three women are looking directly toward the viewer. When an artist paints eyes that look at the viewer, they push the viewer to engage. It establishes a relationship with the painting and what it depicts. The two women, one on the far left and one on the top right, gaze towards the center of the image, bringing the focal point to that canvas area. The figure on the bottom right looks in two directions. Her nose points left, and her eyes look at the viewer. The interaction between those three figures can be seen as a series of invisible lines that form a triangle in the composition’s structure.

The diagram shows the triangle shape. It frames the focal point. There is also a leaf shape that is repeated on the canvas. In the diagram, it’s highlighted in green. The two leaf shapes at the bottom draw your focus to the faces of the other two women and the other two leaf shapes. The composition guides the viewer to look at an area with familiar depictions of women. However, the figures on the right are more visually stimulating.

The viewer wants to look more into those areas because of the nature of the details. This is another aspect of composition, so the change in detail can create a secondary focal point. The two competing focal points work with the theme. These women are sex workers, and the image creates a tension between what you are guided to look at and what you actually look at. Picasso was revealing his perspective through his use of composition here.

During the Spanish Civil War, the town of Guernica was bombed. This political image is Picasso’s perspective on the tragedy. It is a stylistic image full of abstraction. The detail is complex, but the image still has a balanced composition, so it isn’t messy or confusing. One of the ways that he balances those complex visuals is the absence of color. This adds simplicity to balance the complexity of the abstracted imagery.

The stylization is a strength because photographs of such horrors might be too much for the viewer. Picasso told the story through interesting aesthetics. It shows how vital the artist’s role can be in telling stories that can be too difficult to hear. The use of color also gives the image a respectful tone. Culturally, we associate some colors with certain emotions and practices.

The diagram above shows Guernica’s simplistic structure. When you look at this artwork and its use of light and shade, you notice the triangular structure. Inside the triangle, there is more light than shade. On the outside, the reverse is true. The simple pyramid shape balances the complex abstract visuals. Great composition involves balancing complexity with simplicity, and that’s what Picasso did.

Notice the diagonal lines in the top left and right corners. It creates depth in an image where the absence of shading makes the figures flat. Viewing this painting is like entering a room full of cardboard cutouts. The viewer is intrigued and listening to the story Picasso wanted to tell. It’s guiding them to learn about true horror, and Picasso’s skill stops them from looking away.

If you want an image to have a perfectly balanced composition, then total symmetry will create that. Sadly, a totally symmetrical image can seem analytical and obvious. The viewer can immediately recognize the composition. Partial symmetry isn’t as noticeable, and it still creates a high level of balance. Mirrors are incredibly useful in a painting because they add symmetry, and their positioning and size can define the amount of symmetry. Its angle can create different options and variations in the symmetry it creates.

We have a side view of a woman looking in the mirror. The mirror shows her face as almost entirely symmetrical. The mirror is also angled to show a front view of the woman’s body. Abstraction allows for more choice in the level of symmetry that’s chosen.

The diagram above shows that the left vertical that frames the mirror is a symmetry line. You can see how effective it is at creating partial symmetry. However, in this image, it doesn’t automatically create balance. The composition is dominated by circles. In composition, curves are used to balance angles. Picasso knew this, so he used the background to create balance. The background is patterned with squares. The background contains angles, and the foreground is mainly curved, except for the two verticals that frame the mirror and the stripes that act as detail. The final painting is complex, so the composition needs to be strong. A simplistic image might be more forgiving but wouldn’t reveal his high skill level. Picasso was bold in his choices, and this image is full of pattern and color, yet it isn’t overwhelming.

The human mind constantly sees faces in the shapes created by various objects. This is a playful painting of a mandolin and a guitar. Still, we immediately see the face that is created by the combination of those objects. The face dominates the canvas. It looks directly at the viewer, demanding their attention. The color palette is also loud.

In the diagram above, the image is reduced to its basic structure. The three circles are the central part of the image, and their positioning forms a triangle on the canvas. That area is the focal point of the composition. This is a familiar composition structure. It has similarities with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The structure is created through lines that are in their most common position. They are either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal. The simplicity of color and the simplicity of the linework is designed to be attention-grabbing.