"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is the defining figure of twentieth-century art and the co-founder of Cubism - the movement that dismantled five centuries of Western pictorial convention and opened the door to all that followed. Born in Málaga, Spain, and working principally in Paris, his career of more than seventy years encompassed painting, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, and collage, producing an estimated 20,000 works across every medium. His masterpieces - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Guernica, the Vollard Suite - remain among the most significant and valuable works in the history of art. His prints and works on paper are among the most actively collected of the twentieth century, held in the permanent collections of MoMA New York, the Musée Picasso Paris, the Reina Sofía Madrid, and institutions worldwide.