The present work comes from the period when Picasso was a student at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, which he joined in October 1898. He quickly became disillusioned with the formality and the slowness of the training he received there, however, and began associating with the artistic circles of the city beyond the confines of the Academy. Picasso immersed himself in the modernist ferment around him, particularly art nouveau and symbolism, w🌸hich were the prevailing 🍰artistic trends at the time.

The lovers in El Beso appear again in the oil painting Couple in the Retiro Park, 1897-1898 (see: John Richardson, A life of Picasso: Early Years, 1881-1906, New York, 1991, p. 92). This drawing, with its sinuous curves, reflects the art nouveau influences surrounding Picasso in the late 1890s as well as the symbolism expounded by artists such as Gauguin. The overall effect in the drawing recalls an interna💃tional style transcending Picasso's nationality, a style such as that practiced by the northerner Edvard Munch - although this kinship is more of accidental affinity than a direct influence, as Picasso was unlikely to have encountered the older master's art by this time. Although the typically symbolist dimensions of anxiety and self-absorption are almost absent here -  reflect⛄ing the optimism of Picasso's youth -  the scene is interesting for the way it projects an expression of the artist's romantic feelings, which contrasts all the more strongly with the deeper, more violent tensions that shaped the artist's life and the content of his art in the years to come.