The abstract art master Picasso, you may not know that these are his works

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso was the most dominant and influential artist of the 1st half of the 20th century. Associated most of all with pioneering Cubism, he also invented collage and made major contribution to Surrealism. He saw himself above all as a painter, yet his sculpture was greatly influential, and he also explored areas as diverse as printmaking and ceramics. Finally, he was a famously charismatic personality, the leading figure in the Ecole de Paris. His many relationships with women not only filtered into his art but also may have directed its course, and his behavior has come to embody that of the bohemian modern artist in the popular imagination.

1.Cat catching a bird

Is this an image of the war in Spain, or a premonition of even worse things to come? During the first three months of 1939, the cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia fell into the hands of Franco's troops, while Hitler was making inroads into Eastern Europe. Picasso's mother died on 13 January. Political and personal events combined in his imagination to find expression in tormented pictures full of allegorical resonances. Picasso explained: "I did not paint the war because I am not the kind of painter who sets out looking for subjects, like a photographer. But there is no doubt that the war is present in the paintings that I did at the time. Later, perhaps, a historian will demonstrate that my work changed under the influence of the war." From pictures of women mourning the war victims in Spain, Picasso turned to visions of animals with ferocious expressions.Picasso's work is often seen as a reflection of the world around him, and the time in which he lived. The Spanish Civil War and the death of his mother are thought to have influenced the dark, tormented images that he created during this period.

2.The girls of Avignon

This painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, was painted in 1907 and is the most famous example of cubism painting. In this painting, Picasso abandoned all known form and representation of traditional art. He used distortion of female's body and geometric forms in an innovative way, which challenge the expectation that paintings will offer idealized representations of female beauty. It also shows the influence of African art on Picasso.

3.Figures at the Seaside

A series of bizarre erotic beach scenes, including The Kiss, was painted in the summer of 1931 at Picasso's French Riviera vacation resort, Juan-les-Pins. Said to be inspired by the 50-year-old painter's liaison with 19-year-old model, Marie-Therese Walter, the grotesque nature of the depicted forms reduces this moment of intimate contact to a level of crudity, probably more representative of his deteriorating relationship with his wife, Olga.

4.Guernica

Guernica was Picasso's response to the bombing of the Basque town of the same name on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso was commissioned by the republican government of Spain to produce a mural painting for the Spanish Pavilion at the World Fair in Paris. Painted in one month - from May to June 1937 - Guernica became the centerpiece of the Spanish pavilion and a sensation at the Fair, but it was consequently banned from exhibition in Spain until military dictator Franco fell from power in 1975.

5.A dream

The painting, which is titled "Le Rêve" in French, or "The Dream", is an oil painting that was done by Pablo Picasso in 1932. It is a portrait of his 24-year-old mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. The painting is said to have been done in one afternoon, on January 24, 1932. It is a part of Picasso's period of distorted depictions. This is seen in the oversimplified outlines and the contrasted colors that resemble early Fauvism.

6.The Weeping Woman

The Weeping Woman series is regarded as a thematic continuation of the tragedy depicted in Picasso's epic painting Guernica. In focusing on the image of a woman crying, the artist was no longer painting the effects of the Spanish Civil War directly, but rather referring to a singular universal image of suffering.

7.Girl Before A Mirror