PABLO RUIZ PICASSO (Malaga, 1881 - Mougins, France, 1973). "Sala Gaspar, Barcelona". Lithograph on paper, copy 3/3. Signed and dated in pencil by Pablo Picasso. Presents certificate from the Sala Gaspar. Measurements: 24 x 18 cm; 39 x 34 cm (frame). This lithograph is a Christmas greeting card from the 1960s from the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona. It is signed by Pablo Picasso, both in plate and by hand. It is an invitation addressed to Marisol de Villanueva, an actress and director of western cinema, who was also a good friend of the cubist artist. Pablo Ruiz Picasso is the great genius of contemporary painting. The creator of Cubism together with Braque, his capacity for invention and creation places him at the pinnacle of world painting. He was born in Malaga, where his father was a drawing teacher and director of the Municipal Museum. The Ruiz Picasso family soon moved to A Coruña, and from there to Barcelona, where the young Pablo began his artistic studies at the Provincial School of Fine Arts (1895). Although the style of the school was entirely academic, the painter soon came into contact with modernist groups which changed his form of expression. Only two years later, in 1897, Picasso held his first solo exhibition at the café "Els Quatre Gats". Paris was to become Pablo s great goal and in 1900 he moved to the French capital for a short period of time. When he returned to Barcelona, he began to work on a series of works in which the influences of all the artists he had known or whose work he had seen could be seen. He is a sponge that absorbs everything, but retains nothing; he is searching for a personal style. Between 1901 and 1907 he developed the Blue and Pink Stages, characterised by the use of these colours and by their subject matter with sordid, isolated figures, with gestures of grief and suffering. Painting in these early years of the 20th century was undergoing continuous changes and Picasso could not remain on the sidelines. He became interested in Cézanne, and based on his example he developed a new pictorial formula together with his friend Braque: Cubism. But Picasso did not stop there and in 1912 he practised collage in painting; from that moment on, anything goes, imagination became the master of art. Picasso was the great revolutionary, and when all the painters were interested in Cubism, he was preoccupied with the classicism of Ingres. The surrealist movement of 1925 did not catch him unawares and, although he did not participate openly, it served as an element of rupture with what had gone before, introducing into his work distorted figures with great force and not exempt from rage and fury. As with Goya, Picasso was also greatly influenced in his work by his personal and social situation. His often tumultuous relationships with women had a serious impact on his work. However, what had the greatest impact on Picasso was the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the bombing of Guernica, which led to the creation of the most famous work of contemporary art. Paris was his refuge for a long time, but the last years of his life were spent in the south of France, working in a very personal style, with bright colours and strange shapes. In the 1950s he made several series of important classical paintings which he reinterpreted in homage. By the 1960s he had become a legend in the art world and the artist lived his last years at the Château de Vouvenargues, where he was able to continue his work until the end of his life. An example of this work is this Christmas invitation.