PICASSO'S LEGACY

PICASSO'S LATE STYLE

PICASSO'S APPROACH TO PAINTING

PICASSO'S LAST DECADES IN REVIEW

PICASSO'S APPROACHES TO PRINTMAKING

PICASSO'S LATE STYLE

What gave Picasso's late works, 1953-73, their distinctive character? Many of his contemporaries thought his last years revealed a steady decline in his powers. Few recognised the rejuvenated inventiveness and adventurousness of his later works.

In 1957 a sensitive reviewer thought she detected emerging: 'a curiously graphic style which lets many nervous lines sprawl over the canvas like roots, dividing it into numerous compartments.' Also new was the flamboyant painterliness of thinned oil paint or spontaneous dribbles with which Picasso augmented these impulsively drawn images.

The key periods of Picasso's life were linked to his private life, especially the women he loved and left. His last wife and the chief muse of his late years was Jacqueline Roque. More and more exclusively he focussed his attention on the human face and figure. Elaborate multiple figure compositions disappeared after 1963, replaced by two, or at most, three figure compositions.

Surprisingly for such a revolutionary artist, Picasso was a traditionalist. He explained: 'What's a painter basically? He's a collector who wants to establish a collection of his own by making the pictures himself that he likes by other people. That's how I begin, and then they turn into something else.'

Leaving Paris behind, he took less and less interest in contemporary artistic trends. Preferring the ageless world of art, Picasso now painted variations on Delacroix's Women of Algiers, Velasquez's Las Meñinas, Manet's Luncheon on the Grass. He also made a series of La Californie studio interiors and variations on the Painter and his Model. The Art Gallery's emblematic Nude in a rocking chair exemplifies the key artistic qualities and preoccupations of Picasso's extraordinary late flowering.