Carles Casagemas had returned to Paris and…

Carles Casagemas had returned to Paris and attempted to shoot the woman he loves, then turned the gun on himself and died on February 17, 1901.

Picasso makes two death portraits of Casagemas several months later as well as two funeral scenes (Mourners and Evocation).

He is working in Madrid as an art editor for a new journal, Arte Joven, and begins painting the powerfully expressive works of his so-called Blue Period between 1901 and mid-1904, when blue is the predominant color he uses).

By year's end, he has dropped the Ruiz name altogether.