Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and stage set designer

With his Cubist works, he created an essential foundation for modern art, including Surrealism. From 1924 to 1934 he was himself intensively involved in the Surrealist movement, an involvement attested to in many ways by the art of this period. Yet he never considered himself a true member of Breton's group, instead retaining his independence even during his Surrealist phase. One of Breton's demands in particular went too far for him - that the unconscious mind become the sole arbiter and motor of artistic activity. Not believing in this sort of automatism, Picasso maintained his own approach to the surreal. As he once said, it was important to him not to lose sight of nature. His concern was with a deeper resemblance that is more real than reality and thus achieves the surreal. In the years 1935 to 1939, in view of the rise of fascism, Picasso's Surrealism increasingly took on a new thrust, in which political commitment and poetic revolution were combined.