In Picasso Etchings, a Focused Look at an Artist in Flux.

Pablo Picasso needs no introduction, but you do have to orient yourself whenever you touch down on a body of his work. After all, he lived through multiple wars, artistic revolutions and domestic regimes. He worked in several mediums, helped invent one (collage) and marveled over another (cinema). However, the beauty of ''Picasso's Vollard Suite: The Sculptor's Studio,'' on view at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, is that it doesn't require an extensive Picasso review to understand. Instead, it focuses on a small body of work -- a group of etchings made from 1933 to 1934 -- that encapsulate many of the artist's concerns during that period. At the time the etchings were made, Picasso was living in Gisors, a town about 45 miles northwest of Paris where he bought a chateau in June 1930. His love interest was Marie-Therese Walter, a young woman he had met in 1927. At the time of their meeting Marie-Therese was 17 and Picasso was 45, and married to the Russian ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova. (Picasso and Olga remained married until her death in 1954 -- mostly because he would have had to divide his property evenly with her if they divorced.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]