Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is without doubt the most prolific and influential artist of the recently ended twentieth century. The various steps that critics and historians have managed to identify in his long career have been more helpful with regard to the classification of his works than in their analysis and interpretation. Abandoning the traditional use of subject matter to achieve variety and meaning, Picasso gradually reduced his options to a handful of standardized motifs but used a vast array of different styles as the principal means of communicating ideas and feelings. In short, style is meaning in Picassoʼs art; his notoriously mercurial nature found expression in stylistic variety and experimentation.

In the course of his long essay, Josep Palau i Fabre pinpoints the keys to understanding a period (1926-1939) and an artist who was fully aware of the complexity of his time and the timelessness of true art: “Repeatedly, I am asked to explain how my painting evolved. To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past, perhaps itʼs more alive today than it ever was.”