Twenty years of age when Queen Victoria died, Pablo Picasso's career spanned decades of great change.
The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts' new show, Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of Youth, explores the early years of the great master's formation, spanning 1896 - 1914, through the influential artist's teenage years to his early 30s.
Director of the Sainsbury Centre, Jago Cooper, says: "People like Picasso create this edifice of celebrity, which becomes really hard to break down. Their name becomes bigger than the individual within. They become synonymous with change." This exhibition aims to understand who Picasso was.
It's curated by Paul Greenhalgh, director of the centre when the idea for the exhibition was established. Paul said: "He had a lot of 19th Century baggage, which we tend to forget, as we see him as the quintessential modernist. This duality explains the complexity of his genius."
The Legacy of Youth journeys from Picasso's boyhood, through to his development of cubism - a modern art movement pioneered alongside Georges Braque.
Picasso's works include impressionism and symbolism, with the artist absorbing and experimenting with those styles before moving on to new things, in order to develop a voice of his own. Paul said: "He was trying to create a new way of seeing, a new set of conventions, to push us into the modern age".
The Norwich show contains works rarely seen in the UK - lent from Paris, Vienna, Barcelona and New York - alongside pieces from the centre's permanent collection and works of artists important to Picasso's development, including Claude Monet, Edward Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre Bonnard.
The exhibition's design nods to the period in which Picasso was working. Dark, rich, purple walls with archways pull the viewer into a Victorian style.
"It represents what the Sainsbury Centre does - early Picasso," added Paul.
The Sainsbury Centre's permanent collection holds six Picassos, boasting two pieces of global importance - their nearest rival being the Tate.
With factors out of the curator's control resulting in the show being smaller than first planned, the exhibition allows the visitor to see into a world of significant importance, coming away in awe of the complexity and fascinating legacy of the youth of one of the greats of modern art.
Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of Youth is on show at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts until July 17. Tickets are £13, £12 for concessions. An accompanying book is due to be published, which will explore the key works and themes of the exhibition.
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