Untitled 1937

Picasso made this painting using oil on canvas, and he wasn't afraid to let the process show. You can see it in the way the colors are laid down, almost like a puzzle, each piece distinct yet part of a whole. Look at the woman's face. One eye gazes forward, while the other peeks from the side, it is as if time has been fractured into multiple moments, flattened onto a single plane. Then check out her hands, clasped together, each finger a carefully placed stroke, and consider how they ground the whole image in a kind of reality, in spite of the abstraction. Picasso was always in conversation with the artists of his time, and the ones who came before him, like Cezanne. And like them, he invites us to see the world not as it is, but as it could be. It's like he's saying, "Here's a painting, but it's also a question. What do you see?"