Picasso, a master at drawing, with the overwhelming creativity that supported his ceaseless self-reinvention, is the iconic artist of the twentieth century. This work is an example of Synthetic Cubism, a movement that began in about 1912 and is characterized by the use of collage, with foreign objects added to the canvas. While based on a geometric drawing, Synthetic Cubists tried attaching pieces of newspapers to move the painting from illusion to something closer to reality. To return to a tactile two-dimensional expression of reality, the initial goal of Cubism, Picasso mixed sand into the surface and used white to make the glass and bottle stand out.