Pablo Picasso died exactly 50 years ago at age 91, leaving behind an oeuvre of 147,800 pieces, of which 13,500 were paintings. Though he investigated countless themes throughout his career, Picasso always returned to the realms of myth and the rites of religion, forever swinging between the sacred and the profane. In Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), he distorts the faces of the female prostitutes, replacing them with traditional African masks. His bathers and nudes of the 1920s incorporate elements of Ancient Greece and Rome. His anti-war masterpiece, the huge black-and white oil painting Guernica (1937), depicts the bombed Basque Country and shows suffering, martyrdom, and the crucifixion. This exhibition in Madrid, which spans three decades of Picasso’s career, pairs 22 of his works with loans that include paintings by El Greco, Rubens, Zurbarán, and Delacroix. —Elena Clavarino