Picasso Works Found To Have New Depths

Underneath a dark blue painting of mourners on a beach, a researcher at the National Gallery of Art has found that Pablo Picasso painted - and then painted over - two vivid pictures of a bullfight.

A sign of the great artist’s prolific creativity, his changing artistic mood - or simply his need for something to paint on - the abandoned work was first noticed when bits of bright red and yellow appeared through small cracks in the somber blue.

Infrared cameras eventually solved the mystery. They are now being used to examine other Picassos hanging in a show at the gallery called “Picasso - The Early Years, 1892-1906.”

“About half the paintings in the show have something underneath to investigate,” said Anne Hoenigswald, the conservator who detected the hidden work.