In 1961 Pablo Picasso was eighty years old. It seemed as if the whole world had turned out to participate in his birthday celebration. And well it might. For Pablo Picasso has been called an artist among artists, a rare talent among the talent of the century. Undoubtedly, he is the undisputed master of modern art.

Picasso started a revolution—of paint, composition, and technique. At a time when the world was basking in the pastel beauty of a Renoir, the artistic dots of Seurat, or a landscape by Gauguin, Picasso was shocking the art world with violent splashes of color, and odd shapes born of a new perspective called Cubism.

It is impossible to know Pablo Picasso as one man, one painter. His work is an entire artistic movement. His influence upon the world or art perhaps can never be measured, nor his genius fully understood. But the work of Picasso will forever be a priceless gift to the world.

From the dust jacket