The autobiographical element in Picasso's art was always strong, although it served as a mirror for hs feelings and fantasies rather than as a direct record of events. Subjects to which he returned again and again, were the artist at work and the artist and his model. Most often, as in the Vollard Suite etchings, the model was also his lover, so that the interlocking of life and art became even more complete - Picasso did in fact feel that artistic and sexual potency were closely related. The waning of his sexual powers from the mid-1960s is perhaps reflected in the solitary state of the artist in this painting; if Picasso nevertheless remained compulsively creative, the strong and violent images of passion in his late works seem like painful memories.
He cannot be said to have grown old gracefully; his final self-portrait, painted the year before he died in 1973, is a bleak study of a condemned man, apparently unconsoled by a lifetime of high achievement.
