Portrait of Marie-Therese 1937

Here we have Picasso's portrait of Marie-Therese, made with oil on wood panel, and those hard, flat surfaces gave him a kind of freedom to flatten the face. It’s like he made this face up out of clay. I imagine him building up each plane of her face with these simplified shapes, and it's almost like she's gazing in two directions at once! The way her features are slightly misaligned and the blue shadows create depth, is like he's trying to grasp something that keeps slipping away. He’s not interested in likeness so much as the way a face can be architecture, or a landscape. Picasso was in conversation with painters like Cezanne, who distorted perspective to give a sense of volume and presence. It’s a reminder that painting isn’t just about what we see, but about how we see. Each brushstroke is a thought, a feeling, a question asked in paint.