"In 1900, at around the time of his nineteenth birthday, Pablo Picasso went to Paris to visit the Universal Exhibition and to have his first experience of the art capital of the world. His training had been in provincial Spanish art schools, but the following year he was offered a large exhibition at the prestigious Vollard Gallery and he became familiar with the bohemian district of Montmartre and its gaudy pleasures. Yet only a few years later he was challenging Matisse for the position of leader of the French avant-garde and was set on his revolutionary path as a universal artist. This book follows Picasso's discovery of art and life in the French capital and examines his response to specific artists, including Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, and Cézanne. He soon began to forge a personal style, drawing on the process of painting itself, which blurred the traditional distinctions between imitation and reality, culminating in perhaps the most seminal painting of the twentieth century, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon."--Publisher's description.