In 1900 Pablo Picasso went to Paris to visit the Universal Exhibition and experience life in the art capital of the world. His training had been in provincial Spanish art schools, but in the space of just a year he was offered an exhibition at the prestigious Vollard Gallery. A few years later he was challenging Matisse for the position of leader of the French avant-garde.
This book follows Picasso’s discovery of art and life in the French capital, and examines his response to specific artists, including Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, and Cézanne. Amid the distractions of the bohemian district of Montmartre, he began to forge a personal style, which blurred the distinctions between imitation and reality, culminating in perhaps the most seminal painting of the 20th century, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

Marilyn McCully has organized numerous international exhibitions and written widely about Picasso. She is cocurator of Three Decades of Picasso’s Drawings, a 2011–12 exhibition at the Frick Collection, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.