Letters, stamps & penpals

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Pablo Picasso’s lettre to Gertrude Stein: Art as correspondence

This week on famous lettres from history, we feature just one of many instances of correspondence between legendary artist Pablo Picasso and his friend, confidante and collector Gertrude Stein.

Credited as one of the founders of Cubism, Picasso's distinctive art style vaulted him above and beyond his contemporaries and into the history books as one of the leading artists of the modern era.

In this letter to Gertrude, Picasso sketches part of his daily life while wishing her and her sister good health. Correspondence between Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso have been serialized in books, helping paint a picture of one of the golden eras of Parisian art and culture, as well as one of its darkest under Nazi occupation in the first half of the twentieth century.