Celestina 1904

Picasso made this drawing, Celestina, with colored pencils on paper. Here, Picasso is sketching and feeling his way through the subject, capturing the essence of these figures with economical lines, and the ochre paper showing through feels like warm sunlight hitting the sketched marks. I love how Picasso has layered strokes of blues and reds to create the form of the cloak, and if you look closely, you can almost see the ghost of lines underneath, where he’s redrawn and adjusted the shapes, and those marks are essential for how the figure’s personality comes out. Picasso isn’t trying to hide the process or pretend that art-making is a seamless, perfect thing. Instead, it’s about embracing the raw energy of the moment. Maybe it’s like Matisse’s line drawings, but with a slightly haunted edge. Both artists remind us that art is a conversation across time, where artists riff off each other, borrow ideas, and push things in new directions.