Standing woman 1946

This is a painting made by Pablo Picasso, it's called Standing Woman. He's working with a simple palette: ochre, white, brown, and black. I can only imagine the struggle and the joy he must have felt while making this. The figure seems to emerge and dissolve at the same time. The paint is laid down in such a way as to allow for real shifts in light. I wonder, was Picasso thinking about his predecessors like Cezanne as he made this? The surface has such a great feeling of tension—not just because it's a painting of a standing woman but because the paint itself seems to stand, to protrude. The shapes are blocky, and they come together almost like architecture, like a building. It makes me think about what it's like to build an image, to construct it bit by bit, and how that process allows us to see the world in new and exciting ways. Artists throughout time, they're always in conversation with each other, taking what they need and pushing off in new directions.