Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973

Book excerpt: One name in the history of the 20th century art stands out over all others: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). As painter, graphic artist and sculptor, he displayed an inventive enterprise and innovative bravado that always kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries. As one of them, the painter Max Ernst, ruefully put it: No one can touch Picasso. He is genius incarnate. The works selected here cover Picasso's entire output, from the less familiar to key masterpieces such as Guernica, from the Blue and Rose Periods early in his career through his cubist and classicist phases and the formal experiments of the Thirties to his later involvement with politics in art. Discusses the life and work of the well-known twentieth-century painter, describing how his art was influenced by the events in Spain and his early years there.