ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Picasso's prolonged adolescent separation and individuation process, his developmental challenges, unconscious conflicts, and traumas as represented in the art of his Blue Period. Much of the Blue Period work was produced in Barcelona, as well as during Picasso's stays in Paris, tableaux of two cities, as he moved back and forth. The emaciated, elongated figures of the Blue Period, with gaunt long faces and hands, were heavily influenced by El Greco and Spanish art. The Blue Period ended with Picasso finding new love, a live-in girlfriend, Fernande Olivier, his own studio, and a group of admiring, devoted French friends. In terms of psychological development, the Blue Period marked Picasso's transition from adolescence to adulthood, although aspects of adolescence persisted throughout his life, with both positive and negative effects. Both his personal and artistic identities achieved new integration.
