Interior with easel 1926

Pablo Picasso painted this oil on canvas entitled, Interior with Easel. There’s a way that Picasso approaches mark making, which feels conversational, like one shape responds to another, and the palette is very unified with a strong key tone. There’s a dance between representation and pure form here, as Picasso presents us with a painting of a painting. I love the surface quality, it’s neither particularly thin nor thick, but he leaves enough of the brushwork for you to get a real sense of the process of how the image evolved. Look at the way he renders the easel with these confident straight lines and geometric planes, then consider the contrast with the figure to the left of the painting, which is rendered with slightly softer, more sinuous forms. I think of him in conversation with artists like Braque, but also so many painters working today. Ultimately, this is a painting that welcomes us into a space of ambiguity and multiple interpretations.