Following the turmoil of World War I and his own forays into Cubism, Picasso returned to a more graceful, traditional and classical style in the early 1920s.

Picasso's first solo exhibition of paintings was held at Vollard's gallery on the rue Laffitte in Paris in 1901 and it brought the nineteen-year-old, recently arrived from Barcelona, his first acclaim.  Vollard published editions of Picasso's earliest etchings, but was disinterested in his Cubist work.  The collaboration resumed in the 1920s and continued until Vollard's death in 1939.