Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War. His career spanned more than 76 years, from his late teens to his death in 1973.
Paintings by Pablo Picasso
Garçon à la pipe (1905)
Garçon à la Pipe ('Boy with a Pipe') is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1905 when Picasso was 24 years old, during his Rose Period, soon after he settled in the Montmartre area of Paris. The painting depicts a Parisian adolescent boy who holds a pipe in his left hand and wears a garland of flowers on his head, surrounded by two floral decorations. The subject was a local boy named "P’tit Louis" who died at a young age. The painting is listed as one of the most expensive paintings, after being sold at Sotheby's auction for $104 million on 5 May 2004. It is currently the fifth highest selling painting by Picasso.
In 1905, Picasso was still a struggling artist and had settled in Montmartre in Paris. He was living in poverty in a dilapidated artist building at 13 rue Ravignan known as Le Bateau-Lavoir. Picasso had made the transition from his earlier pessimistic Blue Period and was now in a new, more optimistic phase known as his Rose Period.
The Magpie (Monet) (1868)
The Magpie (French: La Pie) is an oil-on-canvas landscape painting by the French Impressionist Claude Monet, created during the winter of 1868–1869 near the commune of Étretat in Normandy. Monet's patron, Louis Joachim Gaudibert, helped arrange a house in Étretat for Monet's girlfriend Camille Doncieux and their newborn son, allowing Monet to paint in relative comfort, surrounded by his family.
Between 1867 and 1893, Monet and fellow Impressionists Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro painted hundreds of landscapes illustrating the natural effect of snow (effet de neige). Similar winter paintings of lesser quantity were produced by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Caillebotte, and Paul Gauguin. Art historians believe that a series of severe winters in France contributed to an increase in the number of winter landscapes produced by Impressionists.
Guernica (Picasso) (1937)
Guernica is a large 1937 oil painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It is one of his best-known works, regarded by many art critics as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history. It is exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
The grey, black, and white painting, done on a canvas 3.49 meters (11 ft 5 in) tall and 7.76 meters (25 ft 6 in) across, portrays the suffering wrought by violence and chaos. Prominently featured in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, screaming women, a dead baby, a dismembered soldier, and flames.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, originally titled The Brothel of Avignon) is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó, a street in Barcelona, Spain. The figures are confrontational and not conventionally feminine, being rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes, some to a menacing degree. The far left figure exhibits facial features and dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. The two adjacent figures are in an Iberian style of Picasso's Spain, while the two on the right have African mask-like features. Picasso said the ethnic primitivism evoked in these masks moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force" leading him to add a shamanistic aspect to his project.
Drawing from tribal primitivism while eschewing central dictates of Renaissance perspective and verisimilitude for a compressed picture plane using a Baroque composition while employing Velazquez's confrontational approach seen in Las Meninas, Picasso sought to take the lead of the avant-garde from Henri Matisse. John Richardson said Demoiselles made Picasso the most pivotal artist in Western painting since Giotto and laid a path forward for Picasso and Georges Braque to follow in their joint development of cubism, the effects of which on modern art were profound and unsurpassed in the 20th century.
Dora Maar au Chat (1941)
Dora Maar au Chat (English: Dora Maar with Cat) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1941 and depicts Dora Maar (original name Henriette Theodora Markovitch), the artist's lover, seated on a chair with a small cat perched on her shoulders. The painting is listed as one of the most expensive paintings, after achieving a price of $95 million at Sotheby's on 3 May 2006. It is currently the sixth-highest-selling painting by Picasso.
The canvas is one of many portraits of Dora Maar painted by Pablo Picasso over their nearly decade-long relationship. Their relationship began when Picasso met Maar on the set of Jean Renoir's film Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, where she was working as a movie photographer. They were formally introduced by the French Surrealist poet Paul Éluard. Picasso fell in love with the 29-year-old Maar at the age of 55 and the couple began living together. Picasso was drawn to Maar not only for her beauty but also for her intellect and artistic nature. Like Picasso, Maar was an artist, photographer, and poet. She shared Picasso's political views and also spoke Spanish. Their relationship was intensely passionate and tempestuous and she challenged Picasso both intellectually and artistically. Maar assisted Picasso with his artwork, particularly during his creation of Guernica, which she documented with photographs.
Les Femmes d'Alger (1950)
Les Femmes d'Alger (English: Women of Algiers) is a series of 15 paintings and numerous drawings by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The series, created in 1954–1955, was inspired by Eugène Delacroix's 1834 painting The Women of Algiers in their Apartment (French: Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement). The series is one of several painted by Picasso in tribute to artists that he admired.
The entire series of Les Femmes d'Alger was bought by Victor and Sally Ganz from the Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris for $212,500 in June 1956 (equivalent to $2.5 million in 2025). Ten paintings from the series were later sold by the Ganz's to the Saidenberg Gallery, with the couple keeping versions "C", "H", "K", "M" and "O".
The Weeping Woman (1937)
The Weeping Woman (French: La Femme qui pleure) is a series of oil on canvas paintings by Pablo Picasso, the last of which was created in late 1937. The paintings depict Dora Maar, Picasso's mistress and muse. The Weeping Woman paintings were produced by Picasso in response to the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War and are closely associated with the iconography in his painting Guernica.
Picasso was intrigued with the subject of the weeping woman, and revisited the theme numerous times that year. The most elaborate version, created on 26 October 1937, is in the Tate collection. Another Weeping Woman painting created on 18 October 1937 is housed at the National Gallery of Victoria and was involved in a high-profile political art theft.
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932)
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (French: Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur) is a 1932 oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, featuring his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter.
The painting was in the personal collection of Los Angeles art collectors Sidney and Frances Brody for nearly six decades. It sold at auction for US$106.5 million, the third highest price for a piece of artwork sold at auction at the time.
Le Rêve (Picasso) (1932)
Le Rêve (English: The Dream) is a 1932 oil on canvas painting (130 × 97 cm) by Pablo Picasso, then 50 years old, portraying his 22-year-old mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter. It is said to have been painted in one afternoon, on 24 January 1932. It belongs to Picasso's period of distorted depictions, with its oversimplified outlines and contrasted colors resembling early cubism. The erotic content of the painting has been noted repeatedly, with critics pointing out that Picasso painted an erect penis, presumably symbolizing his own, in the upturned face of his model. On 26 March 2013, the painting was sold in a private sale for $155 million, making it one of the most expensive paintings ever sold.
Le Rêve was purchased for $7,000 in 1941 by Victor and Sally Ganz of New York City. This purchase began their 50-year collection of works by just five artists: Picasso, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Eva Hesse. After the Ganzes died (Victor in 1987 and Sally in 1997), their collection, including Le Rêve, was sold at Christie's auction house on November 11, 1997, as a means of settling their inheritance tax bill. Le Rêve sold for an unexpectedly high $48.4 million, at the time the fourth most expensive painting sold (tenth when taking inflation into account). The entire collection set a record for the sale of a private collection, bringing $206.5 million. The total amount paid by the Ganzes over their lifetime of collecting these pieces was around $2 million.
The Old Guitarist (1903)
The Old Guitarist is an oil painting by Pablo Picasso, which he created in late 1903 and early 1904. It depicts an elderly musician, a haggard man with threadbare clothing, who is hunched over his guitar while playing in the streets of Barcelona, Spain. It is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.
At the time of The Old Guitarist's creation, Modernism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Symbolism had greatly influenced Picasso's style. Furthermore, El Greco, Picasso's poor standard of living, and the suicide of a dear friend Carlos Casagemas influenced Picasso's style at the time which came to be known as his Blue Period. Several x-rays, infrared images and examinations by curators revealed three different figures hidden behind the old guitarist.
Massacre in Korea (1951)
Massacre in Korea (French: Massacre en Corée) is an expressionist painting completed on 18 January 1951 by Pablo Picasso. Picasso's third anti-war painting after Guernica and The Charnel House, Massacre depicts a scene of a massacre of a group of naked women and children by a firing squad. It has been considered to be a condemnation of American intervention in the Korean War. The painting was exhibited in the Musée Picasso in Paris.
Massacre in Korea is the third in a series of anti-war paintings created by Picasso. It was preceded by the monumental Guernica, painted in 1937, and The Charnel House, painted from 1944 to 1945. The title of this painting refers to the outbreak of the Korean War, which had started in the previous year, yet the subject matter is ambiguous, as Picasso does not point directly to a period or location within the composition.
Picasso's Rose Period (1906)
The Rose Period (Spanish: Período rosa) comprises the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1904 and 1906. It began when Picasso settled in Montmartre at the Bateau-Lavoir among Bohemian poets and writers. Following his Blue Period – which depicted themes of poverty, loneliness, and despair in somber, blue tones – Picasso's Rose Period represents more pleasant themes of clowns, harlequins and carnival performers, depicted in cheerful vivid hues of red, orange, pink and earth tones.
Based largely on intuition rather than direct observation, Picasso's Rose Period marks the beginning of the artist's stylistic experiments with primitivism; influenced by pre-Roman Iberian sculpture, Oceanic and African art. This led to Picasso's African Period in 1907, culminating in the Proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, regarded as a masterpiece.