Hommage à Picasso 1972

Renato Guttuso made this homage to Picasso with brown ink and what looks like watercolor. I imagine Guttuso making this, thinking about Picasso, probably while looking at a Picasso, conjuring a bunch of female figures into being all at once. Like, he wanted to make a crowd, using line, and a bit of juicy color. I can feel Guttuso wanting to get some feeling into those lines, and the way he’s scribbling them, especially around the faces, it’s like he's trying to grab something, some essence. The brown wash is like shadows, or maybe it’s just a way to give the figures some weight, but it's also kind of dirty, like real life, not all clean and perfect. It reminds me of other artists who were also working through Picasso's influence like de Kooning, for example. We’re all just pinging off each other, trying to figure out what it means to be human, to make something real, using whatever we’ve got. Painting doesn't have to be a declaration. It can be more like a question.