The Rose Period (1905–1907) is characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and again featuring many harlequins. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris in 1904, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting.

African-influenced Period

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Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, , which were inspired by African artifacts. Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.

Analytic Cubism

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Analytic Cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed along with using monochrome brownish colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time are very similar to each other.

Synthetic Cubism

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Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919) is a further development of Cubism in which cut paper fragments—often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages—are pasted into compositions, marking the first use of in fine art.

Classicism and Surrealism

In the period following the upheaval of Picasso produced work in a style. This "return to order" is evident in the work of many European artists in the 1920s, including , , and the artists of the movement. Picasso's paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of .

During the 1930s, the replaced the harlequin as a motif which he used often in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the , who often used it as their symbol, and appears in Picasso's .

Arguably Picasso's most famous work is his depiction of the , — . This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Guernica hung in New York's for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the . In 1992 the painting hung in Madrid's when it opened.

Later works

Picasso was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the held at the in the summer of . In the 1950s Picasso's style changed once again, as he took to producing reinterpretations of the art of the great masters. He made a series of works based on 's painting of . He also based paintings on works of art by , , , and .

He was commissioned to make a for a huge 50 foot high to be built in , known usually as the . He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.

Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles, his means of expression in constant flux until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colourful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate etchings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. One long time admirer, Douglas Cooper, called them "the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man". Only later, after Picasso's death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered and was, as so often before, ahead of his time.