Woman with hat 1962

This is Pablo Picasso's Woman with Hat, it's undated but likely a linocut from the late 50s or early 60s. Look at how he uses color to define the planes of the face – a bold, almost playful division between light and shadow. What strikes me is the physicality of the printmaking process. You can almost feel the gouge of the tool in the linoleum, the directness of the cut translated into these stark, unmodulated colors. Notice the area around the left eye, how the teardrop shape is formed by a series of quick, decisive cuts. There's a tension there, between the graphic simplicity and the raw emotion it conveys. It's like he's digging into the material, and in doing so, digging into the very essence of portraiture. I'm reminded of Matisse's paper cut-outs, with their similar sense of joyful spontaneity, or maybe even some of the German Expressionist printmakers, like Kirchner, who also weren't afraid to let the roughness of the medium shine through. It's all about embracing the process, letting the material speak, and allowing for multiple readings.