Annessa Chan:
An anonymous young man with dark hair and a beard sits by himself in what seems to be a café or bar. The bleak lighting casts a shadow on the stark wall, which is decorated with only a single, sombre landscape painting.
Picasso made this portrait during his Blue Period, a time when he was mourning the suicide of his close friend Carles Casagemas. Casagemas had accompanied Picasso to Paris in 1900, but took his own life a year later, after his failed attempt at murdering a woman who rejected him. You can feel Picasso’s pain in the dark blue tones of his work from this time, when he often depicted socially marginalised people.
Picasso settled in France in 1904. When he was based in Barcelona, he focused on representing the most marginal figures, such as beggars, vagabonds, and women in prison. This is what art historians would later call his Blue Period, which lasted from 1901 to 1904.
What is it about this painting that makes the subject seem so isolated and melancholy? In creating this painting, Picasso may have also been reflecting on his own experience as an outsider, someone who exists beyond social norms and works against the mainstream.