Woman with book 1932

This is Picasso’s “Woman with Book,” painted sometime in the mid-20th century with oil on canvas, and those colors, right? They’re so not trying to be realistic. I mean, look at how he’s laid down these blocks of color, like puzzle pieces fitting just enough to suggest a form. I bet he started with a drawing, very quickly sketched, and then filled in the blanks. The paint isn’t too thick, but you can see the brushstrokes in places, like around the edges of her face, and especially in the background. There’s this sense that he’s not trying to hide the process, you know? He’s letting us see how the painting came together. That little touch of red on her chest, those two dots, they are echoed throughout the painting, tying the whole composition together. You see it in that mark inside the red part of the chair. Picasso was definitely having a conversation with Matisse. Think about Matisse’s use of color and flattened space. It’s like they were pushing each other to see how far they could go!