Woman in striped armchair 1941

Picasso painted this portrait of a woman in a striped armchair with oil on canvas. What I find so interesting is the way he's broken down the figure and then reassembled it in a way that still feels whole, if a little off-kilter. I can imagine him stepping back from the canvas, squinting, turning the painting upside down, trying to see it anew. Maybe he was thinking about how we perceive the world, how we piece together fragments of information to create a cohesive image. The woman’s dress is really interesting to me, and I find the way she's placed in that chair very tender. Picasso was always in conversation with the past, with the great masters who came before him. And like any good artist, he was also pushing against those traditions, finding his own voice, his own way of seeing. He, like so many painters, shows us that painting is a way of thinking, a way of exploring the world, and it's always open to interpretation.