Book excerpt: New insights into Picasso's Blue Period, through innovative technology that reveals hidden compositions, motifs and alterations, plus hitherto unknown information on the artist's materials and process This lavishly illustrated volume reexamines Pablo Picasso's famous Blue Period (1901-04) in paintings, works on paper and sculpture. Relying on new information gleaned from technical studies performed on The Blue Room (Le Tub) (1901), Crouching Beggarwoman (La Miséreuse accroupie) (1902) and The Soup (La Soupe) (1903), this multidisciplinary volume combines art history and advanced conservation science in order to show how the young Picasso fashioned a distinct style and a pronounced artistic identity as he adapted the artistic lessons of fin-de-siècle Paris to the social and political climate of an economically struggling Barcelona. Essays, a chronology and a summary of conservation findings contextualize Picasso's experimental approach to painting during the Blue Period. A major contribution to the burgeoning field of technical art history, Picasso: Painting the Blue Period advances new scholarship on one of the most critical episodes in 20th-century modernism.