Picasso approved the choice of Homme à l’épée, painted on 25 July 1969, to adorn the poster for the exhibition Picasso: Oeuvres 1969-1970, which his dear friend Yvonne Zervos had conceived and organized on his behalf, held at the Palais des Papes, Avignon, May through September 1970. Christian Zervos, the long-time chronicler of Picasso’s production and Yvonne’s husband, wrote the preface to the official catalogue illustrated in black-and-white . The poet Rafael Alberti, also especially close to Picasso during this period, wrote the text for Picasso en Avignon, a book published in 1971 to commemorate in full color this landmark event, the largest and–because the featured works were brand new–the most controversial of the exhibitions held during Picasso’s final years.

“Pablo Picasso invades the Palais des Papes at the head of a column of over a hundred men”– Alberti wrote, as if he were scripting a bulletin for a news broadcast–“accompanied by more than thirty women, two dwarfs, two harlequins and one pierrot, various children... people of a great size, surging out of the most diverse costumes and backgrounds, with the most violent dissonances, insulting arabesques, and the most harmoniously inharmonious explosions” .