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©Pablo Picasso - Female Head 1902

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From The State Hermitage Museum:
This work was produced, according to the majority of scholars, in Barcelona in 1903, although it has been suggested that a drawing of the same model was executed by Picasso in Paris in December 1902. The small format canvas contains a bust-length image of a woman with a scarf around her neck, dynamic lines indicated the plasticity of face, reinforced by the use of colour. Energetically applied long strokes form a thick crown of coarse hair, the locks framing the sitter's eyes with their heavy sadness and fixed, unseeing gaze. Bluish-green tones dominate, but there is also a touch of dull red, the joyless colour of the scarf and the lips, as if the woman had made some helpless gesture to escape from the cold dark blue. This individual sitter is given the features of all the figures of Picasso's Blue Period, encapsulating Picasso's perception of sorrow as the very fabric of life, and all his thoughts on suffering, resignation and sympathy.