art-Picasso.com
Pablo Picasso 1881-1973
©Pablo Picasso - Seated woman 1908
 Seated woman |
From The State Hermitage Museum:
Picasso's early Cubist paintings, produced in the years 1907-1908, demonstrate how suddenly the artist departed from the creation of a visual likeness and immersed himself in a "new reality" created by himself, a reality which was at times frightening and repellent, at times amazing for its innovative harmonies. The artist painted this work in Paris in early 1908. The massive figure of the female nude - who either drowses or simply sits with eyes closed - is extremely schematic, the architectonics of the body emphasized. Straight lines sharply differentiate the main elements of the figure, volume is built up through strong schematic contrasts of light and shade, dark ochre is the determining note in the colour scheme. Everything combines to create the sense of some sleeping, soulless matter, an effect which was to be characteristic of many of the artist's works.