The international congress Picasso from Cultural Studies. The Dream and Lie of Spain (1898–1922), held in the Museo Reina Sofía on 1 and 2 December 2022, inside the framework of Celebrating Picasso 1973–2023, sought to investigate the artist’s relationship with the challenges, crises and transformations that shook Spain in the period stretching from the 1898 Disaster to the end of the Rif War in the 1920s.

In this video, four participants in the congress — Jèssica Jaques Pi, Eloy Martín Corrales, Julia Ramírez Blanco and Abigail Solomon-Godeau — address some of the aspects colouring their interventions which, from Cultural Studies, argue that Picasso was not only aware of the processes of contemporary historical transformation — bohemia, nationalism-colonialism, anarchism and repressive policies in relation to women — but also that his work decisively participated in them, thereby defining a style that solidified in Picasso’s avant-garde work..