Most painters find a style and stick to it. Pablo Picasso didn’t. All through the first half of the 1900s he kept changing how he painted the human body. Sometimes the figures look sliced into sharp shapes; sometimes they’re bright and cartoony; sometimes they’re dark and twisted by war. This exhibition, “Picasso: Reinventing the Figure,” puts eight of his big pivot works in one room so you can watch those changes happen in order.

The setup is simple: one artist, one timeline. You start with a 1907 painting that kicks off Cubism and end with a colorful 1956 studio scene. Wall labels give the close‑up facts on each piece; this essay zooms out. My thesis is that Picasso used the human figure like a mood meter for the modern world. When life around him sped up, fell apart, or slowly healed, his bodies did the same.

In 1907 Paris, new machines, bright electric lights, and art from Africa filled the city with fresh ideas. Picasso caught that buzz in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The five women don’t look calm or smooth; their faces look like carved masks, and their bodies snap into sharp blocks. It’s as if classical art got fed through a blender. 

Seven years later, in Guitar, Picasso does something even stranger, and he builds a body out of thin metal sheets and leaves open space where solid parts should be. Europe is about to enter World War I, a conflict full of new steel machines. The sculpture feels light but also industrial, matching the world’s new steel reality.

After the war, life feels different. Picasso flips from breaking forms to gluing them together. Three Musicians is huge and flat, like cut‑paper shapes stuck to a wall. The bright colors feel like jazz music, fast and loud. But all three players wear masks, hinting that people in the roaring ’20s liked putting on roles.

A decade later, the mood turns inward. In Girl before a Mirror the girl’s reflection doesn’t look like her. One side is bright and curved; the mirror side is greenish and spooky. During the Great Depression, lots of people questioned who they were and where they were headed. Freud’s ideas about dreams and hidden feelings were popular. Picasso shows that split right on the canvas.

World War II creeps in, and Picasso’s colors and shapes get tense. Night Fishing at Antibes glows with strange pinks and greens. The figures on the dock are twisted and uneasy, like they know danger is near. A year later, in Woman Dressing Her Hair, the figure bends in thick black lines, her face more mask than skin. Living in Nazi‑occupied Paris, Picasso packs fear and stress into every brushstroke.

Then comes the darkest piece, The Charnel House. Painted in gray and black, it shows bodies heaped on a table—probably a family killed in the war. Shapes overlap so much it’s hard to tell where one body ends and another starts, just like war news that was often messy or hidden. The human form is now evidence of pain.

The show ends on Studio (La Californie). Ten years after the war, Picasso is in the South of France, working in a sunny room. He paints canvases, sculptures, even himself, all crammed into one bright scene. The bodies are still weird, but they feel alive again. Ending here proves Picasso never stopped changing; he just channeled a new, brighter feeling.

Line the eight works up, and you see one idea: when the world changes, Picasso’s figures change. Sharp edges for a fast new century, bright collage for a hopeful post‑war period, twisted shapes for war fear, gray tones for war trauma, and finally, fresh color for a late‑career comeback. The human body is the message board where all that history shows up.

Modern artists still mess with the figure to talk about identity, gender, and stress. Artist like Jean‑Michel Basquiat with his rough bodies or Wangechi Mutu with her collaged women. Picasso paved the way by proving a body can be anything: a mask, a guitar, a pile of ash, or a riot of color. Looking at his shifts helps us read today’s art and, honestly, today’s news. If the bodies look stressed, maybe people are, too.