Final answer:
Pablo Picasso's sculpture 'Guitar' represents a pivotal move into synthetic cubism, intended to be perceived as both three-dimensional and two-dimensional. Works like 'Girl with a Mandolin' also depict this critical transition in his art, which involved the abstraction and breaking down of forms, merging painting and sculpture, and liberating art from traditional genres.
Step-by-step explanation:
When Pablo Picasso created the sculpture Guitar in 1912, he broke new ground by merging painting and sculpture, shifting into what is known as synthetic cubism. This sculpture, created from sheet metal, is indeed three-dimensional, but it is meant to be viewed predominantly as a flat, two-dimensional object.
Picasso's goal with Guitar was to break down the 'watertight compartments' of traditional visual art categories. Guitar and works like Girl with a Mandolin, and Woman with a Guitar demonstrate an evolution of Cubism; from the muted, overlapping geometric shapes of the early analytical form to the abstracted, fractured, and reassembled forms that define synthetic Cubism, which Picasso and Georges Braque developed.
Furthermore, Picasso's exploration of Cubism extended to works like The Old Guitarist and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which drew inspiration from African art. These works combined angular planes, cubic shapes, and simplified faces reminiscent of statuary and masks, setting the stage for the radical experimentation in merging form and abstraction that would characterize Picasso's later contributions to Surrealism and Modern Art.