Despite his prolific output (over 50k pieces in his lifetime), Picasso would produce just a handful of works that summer of 1910. These pieces were as close as he would ever get to pure abstraction.

Upon his return to France, his art dealer declined to purchase all but one of the works. It was a blow that this new direction towards abstraction was rejected. If Picasso had fully embraced this direction in his art, his would have been among the first Western paintings to be truly abstract. While this accolade is, and likely will always be, contested, Wassily Kandinsky—often hailed as the “father of abstract painting”—didn’t display his first non-representational painting until December 1911.

In a 1928 interview, Picasso declared: “I have a horror of so-called abstract painting.… When one sticks colors next to each other and traces lines in space that don't correspond to anything, the result is decoration.”

The abstract floodgates had opened; in 1935, the painter opined: “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards, you can remove all traces of reality. There’s no danger then…because the idea of the object left an indelible mark.”