Picasso arrived in Paris just before turning 20, and his beginnings in the French capital were not easy. Alone and without too much money, the young genius wandered by the huge metropolis immersed in the Bohemian atmosphere of the city. Prostitutes, alcoholics, wanderings… Picasso began to represent the world in which he was living with a peculiar style of phantasmal and pale figures, immersed in a melancholic universe of blue tones. It is the beginning of the so-called “Blue Period” of the artist.

This self-portrait is not the first that Picasso painted, but it is one of first works of the Blue Period. The work was painted shortly after the suicide of his friend Casagemas, committed when Picasso was still a stranger in the immense Paris . The calm and serenity of the portrayed, the austerity of the work, and the bohemian look of the moustached figure, transmit the image of a brave and decided artist who could easily find his way in spite of all difficulties he could find in it.

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