Picasso, Self-Portrait With Palette, 1906. Once Picasso met Matisse, he started stripping his paintings of color so as not to compete with the master colorist. But his withholding of emotion seems less like restraint than evasiveness, as if the much younger Picasso lacked the maturity to comment directly on his own character. Our eyes slide easily from the blank face to the powerful body and clenched hand. Picasso has reduced himself to a type—the painter as heroic laborer.