Picasso

MRS. VAN WYCK: Then Picasso is obscene … It has six breasts.
TRIX: You cannot be sure if those are breasts. They could be cannons. He was quite obsessed with the Spanish Civil War for awhile.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

Picasso painted a number of female nudes that Mrs Van Wyck might be looking at. Nude Woman With Necklace is one possibility, as at my first glance, I also was unsure how many breasts the figure has. On closer examination, some of them are her stomach and thighs. Remember that Mrs Van Wyck is peering at a tiny piece of transparent celluloid to view the painting.

One of Picasso’s most famous works is Guernica, a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German forces during the Spanish Civil War.