In 1906, as Pablo Picasso was strolling through the Near Eastern Antiquities gallery in the Louvre Museum, he came across sculptures from the Iberian religious sanctuary Cerro de los Santos. He also made acquaintance with the Lady of Elche, a limestone bust of a stunningly beautiful Spanish woman of the 4th century B.C. Over the following months, as if spellbound, he began to makes sketches, paintings, and sculptures inspired by the relics. It was these studies that pulled him away from formal representation in his art and aimed him towards figurative abstraction and Cubism. This is the first exhibition to explore the impact of Iberian art on Picasso, and it combines 200 archaeological pieces with 100 works from Picasso’s long career. —E.C.