Which friend's suicide influenced Picasso's Blue Period?

Carlos Casagemas’s suicide influenced Picasso’s Blue Period. Casagemas, a Spanish artist and close friend, died in Paris on 17 February 1901 after attempting to kill his former lover, Germaine Pichot, and then shooting himself.

Picasso was deeply affected by the death. He painted works such as “The Death of Casagemas,” and the emotional shock helped turn his art toward isolated figures, poverty, grief, blindness, and death. These subjects were expressed through an increasingly restricted palette dominated by blue and blue-green tones.

The Blue Period is usually dated from about 1901 to 1904, although historians treat artistic periods as gradual developments rather than exact calendar boundaries. Casagemas’s death was a major catalyst, but Picasso’s style also reflected his own financial difficulties, observations of marginalized people, and influences from artists including El Greco and Paul Gauguin.