Femme assise, en robe bleue 1950

Jean Metzinger made this painting, "Femme assise, en robe bleue," with oil paint on canvas, sometime in the early 20th century. It’s all about shape and surface. The color palette is muted, but there’s a liveliness in the blues and greens. The artist is thinking about the physicality of paint and how it can be used to create texture. I love the way he’s built up the surface with these small, deliberate brushstrokes that give the painting a real presence. Look at the way he’s handled the face. He’s broken it down into planes and angles, almost like a Cubist sculpture. Each plane is painted with a slightly different hue, which gives the face a sense of depth and volume. It's as if he's trying to capture not just what the woman looks like, but how we perceive her. You see aspects of Picasso’s Cubism and Cezanne's flattening of space, but with a kind of cool precision that feels very modern. It reminds us that art is an ongoing conversation.