House in the garden 1908

This ‘House in the Garden’ by Picasso, hanging in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, is made with oil paint, probably on canvas. The limited palette of greens and browns feels very grounding, almost like looking through a pair of tinted glasses. The way the paint sits on the surface, you can see the marks of the brush. This gives it a handmade, process-oriented feel, which I always appreciate. I find myself drawn to the branches on the left side of the painting. They are rendered in a way that’s both abstract and representational, the tones ranging from light brown to a dark, almost black hue. It’s like a window into another world, or maybe a glimpse into the way Picasso himself was seeing the world at that moment. I think of Cezanne and the way he also used blocks of colour to build up an image, but Picasso takes it further, pushing the boundaries of representation. It's this tension between abstraction and reality that makes the painting so compelling. It encourages us to see and think differently.