Picasso the Painter: Mateo and Guernica (A1)
Mateo does not want the bus to Madrid. In a Málaga kitchen, his sister shows Picasso: blue pictures from 1901 to 1904, the circus, work with Braque, and Guernica from 1937, almost eight meters long, at the Reina Sofía.
Picasso el pintor
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About this article
What you'll learn
Past tense in one scene, words for paintings and colors, estar for sadness, and ser for what a picture is.
Mateo pushes his school book away. Tomorrow his class goes to Madrid, and he does not want the bus. He asks why he should look at eight meters of grey. His sister Lucía sits with him in their kitchen in Málaga and opens a book of photos. Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga. His father was a painter and a drawing teacher. Picasso painted as a child, studied in Barcelona and Madrid, where he learned classical technique, and later lived in France for most of his life. From 1901 to 1904 he painted almost everything blue, with cold colors and poor, lonely people. His friend Carles Casagemas died in Paris, and Picasso was sad. The next pages turn warm: a circus, acrobats, and harlequins. With the French painter Georges Braque he showed a face from many angles at once, in cubes, triangles, and lines. Then Lucía opens the page of Guernica, painted in 1937 after the bombing of Guernica, a city in the Basque Country. It is almost eight meters long, only white, black, and grey, and it hangs in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. The photo shows a horse, a mother, and a strong light. It is a symbol against war. Mateo puts the book by his backpack and says he will get up early to see the horse, not the photo.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
es el pintor español más famoso del mundo
newhe is the most famous Spanish painter in the world
El pintor más famoso: the article el before the noun, then más, then the adjective. That is the whole superlative. The group you compare inside goes with de: del mundo, never en el mundo.
Same shape for anything: la ciudad más grande de España, el río más largo del país.
cambió la historia de la pintura
newchanged the history of painting
Cambiar with a direct object means to change something: cambió la historia. With no object it means to become different: Picasso cambió mucho.
One verb, two meanings, and the object is what tells them apart.
pintaba desde niño
newhe painted from childhood on
Desde takes a noun or a time expression, never an infinitive: desde niño, desde 1901, desde el lunes. Before a verb Spanish uses desde que: desde que llegó a París.
Desde niño is a fixed everyday phrase, exactly like from childhood.
desde muchos ángulos al mismo tiempo
newfrom many angles at the same time
Here desde marks a viewpoint, not a starting time: desde muchos ángulos, desde arriba, desde la ventana. Same word, a different job.
Five words that contain the whole idea of cubism.
Fue una revolución en el arte
newit was a revolution in art
Fue is ser in the preterite and it sums up something finished: fue una revolución, fue un éxito. Note el arte: arte is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, las bellas artes.
Fue plus a noun is how Spanish delivers a verdict on the past.
un símbolo contra la guerra
newa symbol against war
Contra goes straight onto the noun: contra la guerra, contra el frío. Spanish has no contra de.
Very common: una vacuna contra la gripe, jugar contra el Madrid.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Genius
genio
genius
Un genio is a person with an extraordinary gift. Careful: genio also means temper, as in tener mal genio, to be bad-tempered.
Two meanings in one short word, and both are everyday Spanish.
Work of art
obra
work, piece of art
Una obra is a finished creation: a painting, a book, a piece of music. El trabajo is the effort or the job you go to.
Spanish splits into obra and trabajo what English calls work.
The Blue Period
periodo azul
the blue period
The years from 1901 to 1904, when Picasso painted almost everything in blue. Spanish writes periodo or período: both spellings are correct.
Colour words go after the noun: periodo azul, never azul periodo.
Cubism
cubismo
cubism
From cubo, cube. The movement breaks a figure into flat geometric shapes and shows several viewpoints at once.
The ending -ismo names movements in Spanish: cubismo, realismo, impresionismo.
Bombing
bombardeo
bombing, air raid
From bomba, bomb, plus the ending -eo, which names the action itself: bombardeo, tiroteo, goteo.
The -eo ending turns a thing into the action it produces.
Harlequins
arlequines
harlequins
El arlequín is the character in the diamond-patterned costume from the Italian commedia dell'arte, and a favourite subject of the rose period. Plural arlequines: a stressed -ín loses its accent in the plural.
The rule is regular: jardín gives jardines, camión gives camiones.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Years in words
Nació en Málaga en mil ochocientos ochenta y uno
he was born in Málaga in 1881
Spanish reads a year as one whole number: mil ochocientos ochenta y uno. There is no shortcut like eighteen eighty-one, and y appears only between the tens and the units.
Two more years are in this text: mil novecientos treinta y siete and mil novecientos cuarenta y nueve.
The personal a
mostraban a personas pobres y solas
showed poor and lonely people
When the direct object is a person, Spanish puts a in front of it: mostraban a personas, veo a mi madre. With a thing there is no a: mostraban colores.
Dropping it is the commonest mistake for speakers whose language has no such marker.
Preterite against imperfect
pintó casi todo en azul
he painted almost everything in blue
Pintó closes those four years as one finished block. Pintaba and usaba, in the sentences right after it, describe what he kept doing inside them. The same verb, two different jobs.
Between two dates use the preterite; for a habit inside them, the imperfect.
Ser or estar with an adjective
estaba triste
the painter was sad
Estar triste is how someone feels now or because of something: estaba triste porque su amigo murió. Ser triste describes a lasting character, or a thing that is sad in itself: una película triste.
The choice changes the meaning, not the style: es aburrido means he is boring, está aburrido means he is bored.
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