After the suffering of the Second World War, Picasso made a number of monochromatic works concerned with atrocities in the Korean War. He painted four versions of Goat's Skull, Bottle and Candle, a still-life whose inspiration appears to have been the execution of the Communist partisan Nikos Beloyannis by the Greek government.

In Woman Dressing Her Hair, Picasso depicts his mistress, Dora Maar, as grotesque: her ribcage like a hanging carcass of meat, her hands like goat's hooves wringing her hair, her skin hard and leathery, her body both bulbous and emaciated and her feet outrageously oversized. She's trapped in a small room with a purple floor and green walls.

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."

Picasso had been close friends with French writer Max Jacob during the 1910s, but in 1921, Jacob decided to enter a monastery.

"Cubism is not either a seed or a fetus, but an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life."

In The Dream and Lie of Franco, Picasso depicts Spanish dictator Francisco Franco as a monster that first devours his own horse and later does battle with an angry bull.

In The Blue Room, Picasso depicts a young idealized woman bathing in a tub in what we can assume is her bedroom. The woman's figure and small studio background are typical of Picasso's blue period.

"The idea of research has often made painting go astray, and made the artist lose himself in mental lucubrations."

Picasso made two paintings entitled Ma Jolie, his nickname for Eva Gouel (whose real name was Marcelle Humbert).

"It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them."