Pablo Picasso is one of my favourite artists and I plan to do a more in-depth profile of him in a later post.  But if you’re a Picasso fan, the On-line Picasso Project is a website you shouldn’t miss.

The On-line Picasso Project is non-profit project that catalogues an amazingly large number of Picasso’s works and a timeline of the artist’s life. It was created in 1997 by Dr. Enrique Mallén from Sam Houston State University. The website contains over 16,000 catalogued artworks, over 6,000 notes, and thousands of commentaries, biographical entries, and archived news articles.

The interface allows the user to easily browse through images and files according to date.  Clicking on an image from the summary page will bring up a small window – a sort of mini web page that details the artwork being viewed. Clicking on the image in the mini page enlarges the work so the viewer can see the finer details.

You can literally spend hours on this site (I have), and the chronological organization of the project allows you to witness Picasso’s development as an artist over the course of his life. The sheer volume of his work is staggering and this database represents about only a third of his estimated 50,000 works. The Guinness Book of Records actually named Picasso as the most prolific painter in history. So set some time aside and check out the On-line Picasso Project, you won’t be disappointed.