Friendship 1908

This is Picasso’s ‘Friendship,’ hanging out at the Hermitage. Look at those angular shapes and earth tones, punctuated by a surprising pop of turquoise. You can almost feel the artist at work, turning the canvas this way and that, adding and subtracting, till these figures emerged. I wonder what Picasso was thinking about when he made this? It's like he's taken apart these two figures and reassembled them in a new way. The paint is thick and juicy in places, thin and washy in others, creating this dynamic push and pull. Look at the way he’s rendered the hands, those simple lines feel so expressive, almost like he's trying to capture the essence of connection, rather than a literal depiction. Picasso was in dialogue with so many artists of his time, from Braque to Matisse, constantly pushing the boundaries of what painting could be. For me, this piece is about that spirit of experimentation, that willingness to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty. It's an invitation to see the world in a new way.