Four Nudes and Sculpted Head (Quatres femmes nues et tete sculptee) 1934

This is 'Four Nudes and Sculpted Head' by Pablo Picasso. It's an etching, made with ink on a plate, that’s then pressed onto paper. What strikes me first is the sheer amount of lines! It's like Picasso is thinking aloud, letting the pen dance and explore every nook and cranny of his subject. Look at the way he uses hatching, those closely spaced parallel lines, to build up form and shadow. See, on the reclining nude on the right, how those lines curve and swell, giving her weight and volume? And then there's that sculpted head looming in the background, rendered with such stark, bold strokes. It’s almost as if Picasso is having a conversation between the living and the inanimate, the soft flesh and the hard stone. There’s something very dream-like about this juxtaposition, something that reminds me of Max Ernst’s surrealist collages. Ultimately, this work embodies that sense of art as an ongoing dialogue, a space where different styles, different eras, and different perspectives can collide and converse.