Through his international career, his painting and strategic choices, Picasso disrupted the rules and the history of modern and avant-garde art. He cancelled the effects of social forces structuring modern artists’ attitudes and horizons. Three historical sequences characterize this phase-shifting process: the 1910s, when Picasso’s soaring career proved it was possible for an artist from the banlieue with academic training to achieve a privileged situation; the 1930s, when Picasso became the central actor of the international avant-garde’s political turn, and after 1945, when he was at the heart of a general disruption in the relationship between the artistic and political fields.