The condition in the question stipulated that "nearly" everyone loved him, so how - if someone did not satisfy the one qualification - would that guarantee that one MUST love him? Doesn't the "nearly" mitigate the certainty of it?

Amber,

The relevant line is:
"Only people who hated cubism failed to be charmed by Picasso."

Diagrammed out, we get:
~(Charmed by PP) --> Hate Cubism

The contrapositive of this conditional is:
~(Hate Cubism) --> Charmed by PP

The answer comes from the contrapositive.

Make sense?

I saw that in the contrapositive, but still was thrown by the 'everyone he came into contact with' thinking that might have an influence. Maybe I'm justify my wrong choice here?

Colleen, LSAT is a difficult test and it's normal to want to justify our incorrect choice. As mentioned in the previous post, the only relevant line is "only people who hated cubism ..."

I was also confused by this answer choice. The premise states that everyone "he came in contact with" was charmed but the answer choice does not say anything about having met Picasso or not so how can we just assume that in the answer choice we had come into contact with him? Doesn't that go against the standard rule of LSAT not to assume anything that is not explicitly stated?

Heather,

You don't actually need the first line at all. The answer comes straight from the second line, the contrapositive of which is:
~(Hate Cubism) --> Charmed by PP