Picasso [antikvár]

In the year 1907 Picasso was only twentyfive. Yet despite his youth he already had behind him a considerable body of artistic achievcment-more than two hundred paintings, several thousand drawings, numerous gouaches, pastels, water-colours and engravings, and a few sculptures. Up till then his work had fallen into two main categories: the paintings of the "blue" period and those of the "pink" period, with perhaps a third-the "negro" period-which began at the end of 1906 but was to last only a few months. Then however the expressionistic realism and the warm-hearted mannerist tendency of the two earlier cycles suddenly gave way to a markedly constructive attitűdé in his work. The change may possibly have been due to the inffuence of African art, but it seems more likely to have sprung from an acquaintance with the woodcarvings of Gauguin and the ancient art of the Ibérián peninsula. However this may have been, it was in this year, 1907, that the young Spanish painter, already established in Paris, sharply broke through the enchanted circle in which his over-complacency threatened to enclose him.