Seated female nude 1910

Pablo Picasso made this painting, “Seated Female Nude,” with oil on canvas, and it’s currently hanging at the Tate Modern. Looking at the angular forms and earthy colors, you can tell Picasso was deep into his Cubist explorations. I imagine him working slowly, turning the figure into geometric shapes. The dark greens and browns create this enclosed space, like the figure is both protected and trapped within her surroundings. You can almost feel the weight of the woman’s body, the way she occupies space, and the struggle of the artist to capture it all on the canvas. I wonder, what was he thinking about? There’s this back-and-forth between abstraction and figuration, which is what I love about painting—it’s not about representation, but about the act of seeing itself. He was inspired by Cezanne, and the flattening of space that he developed, but moved into representing multiple viewpoints at once. I like the way he took that as a starting point and really ran with it. Painting is always a conversation, right?