The Musée National Picasso in Paris is closed for renovations and their huge collection of drawings, paintings and sculptures by Pablo Picasso is going on a world tour - first stop, Seattle Art Museum. Never before have so many works by the master been on display in America, and we get it first.

The show includes 150 works of art including approximately 75 paintings and drawings complemented by a large collection of sculptures and a lot of photographs of Picasso - most of which were taken in his studio with the artist hamming it up for the camera (he was a showman, very much aware of his reputation as the greatest artist of the 20th century, and he played it to the hilt).

A lot of people know about Picasso's famous "blue period" and "rose period" and how he and fellow artist George Braque invented cubism - apparently a clear and linear development. But this show, which is arranged chronologically and spans more than 60 years, shows that he was wildly inventive, and for most of his long career he worked simultaneously in many different styles, especially after cubism. He freely borrowed from everyone, even ripping off his own innovations, earning him the nickname "the great eclectic."

Les deux frères (The Two Brothers) from 1906 is a classical painting of a young nude man carrying his little brother piggyback. It is based on classical Greek sculpture. Year after year he kept going back to this figure. (Cézanne also did a version of this striding Greek youth, and Picasso did his versions of Cézanne's take on Greek art - historical art references abound.)

The painting style and the blank stare and cloudy eye of La Célestine (La Femme à la taie) (La Celestina [The Woman with a Cataract]), a famous painting from 1904, reappeared in paintings throughout his life.

Picasso did it all and most before anyone else. He was the artist all other artist in the 20th century measured themselves against. (Pollock and de Kooning, for instance, obsessively competed against Picasso.)

Picasso's life was an open book. He spoke of art as a kind of diary, and we can clearly see his life unfold in his paintings and sculptures - most tellingly in the many works depicting his numerous wives and mistresses, and through these many portraits of the women in his life we glimpse his highly charged eroticism, his chauvinism and how he sometimes loved and sometimes hated them. He depicts his first wife, Olga, as a mass of sensuous curves and sexual parts, and Dora Maar as an evil woman with fingers like knives. He depicts his women as lovers, mothers, goddesses and demons.

Many of Picasso's works make strong anti-war and political statements.

The works in this show were his own most treasured works, the ones he picked to keep for himself. They clearly show how amazingly prolific Picasso was, how skilled he was and how inventive. His paintings can be lovely, lyrical and sweet, massive and monumental, jagged and disturbing - his linear composition and use of color masterful. Most amazing to me was the monumentality of his sculptures, most of which I had previously seen only in reproduction.

Unfortunately two of his most famous works - Guernica, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - are missing from this show. Still, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Tickets aren't cheap ($23 for adults), but if you love art it is worth every penny.

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

Through Jan. 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Tuesday-Sunday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Thursday-Friday, $23,
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., Seattle
picassoinseattle.org