Picasso, The Embrace

This painting belongs to Picasso's Blue Period, named for the melancholic blue tones that dominated his work after his close friend Carlos Casagemas took his own life, plunging Picasso into deep grief.

The painting shows a man and a woman locked in an embrace, the man on the right, the woman on the left, her slightly swollen belly indicating pregnancy. Rather than joy or celebration, the embrace carries a sense of anxiety and deep unease about the child to come.

Picasso once said of his work, 'I want only emotion to be given off by a picture.'