Seated Portrait of Marie-Therese Walter 1937

This painting of Marie-Therese Walter, sitting in a chair, was done in oil on canvas by Picasso, and, looking at it, you can really see him working through his ideas. There's a patchwork of colours and shapes, like he's building the figure from different angles and perspectives. The colours are bold, with blues, yellows, and purples all jostling for attention. The paint isn't too thick, but you can still see the brushstrokes, especially in the way he's defined the planes of her face. He's not trying to hide his process; he's letting us see how he's putting it all together. Take a look at her hands – they’re so strange, those little yellow fingernails look like cartoonish claws, which makes them both awkward and kind of funny. I think of Francis Picabia and how he used mechanical forms to defamiliarize the body. Like him, Picasso's work embraces paradox and contradiction. He's showing us that art doesn't have to be one thing or the other; it can be both serious and playful, beautiful and strange, all at the same time.