The death of Casagemas 1901

Here's a painting by Picasso, whose friend has passed away. It's kind of hard to look at, isn't it? It's got these thick strokes of blues and greens, sickly yellow. You can almost feel Picasso's grief as he worked. There's a rawness to it, a kind of desperate energy in the way he laid down the paint. I think the color expresses the emotional landscape. I can imagine him standing there, staring at his friend, trying to capture… what? The stillness? The absence? He's searching, you know? Like he's hoping to find some kind of understanding, some way to make sense of it all through the act of painting. He's talking to other painters too, isn't he? Like, he's working through something in real time. It reminds me of other paintings, like maybe Francis Bacon, the way he's wrestling with the body and the soul. It's all part of the same big conversation.