Femme à la résille (Woman in a hairnet)

In this composite portrait Pablo Picasso combines at least three modernist styles to fuse elements of himself with those of two of his lovers, the photographer Dora Maar and the French model Marie-Thérèse Walter. Transforming the sitter's head into a Surrealist biomorph, he flouts anatomical accuracy by depicting their face in profile with two visible eyes: one looking sideways above the left cheekbone, and the other unnaturalistically pointing at us from the ridge of their wide nose.

Fragmenting the figure's hairnet into Cubist facets, he offers two simultaneous views of the accessory: one diagonally from above, showing its green cross-hatching, and the other from the front, revealing a pattern of blue lozenges. Picasso in this painting additionally adopts the high-keyed palette of Henri Matisse, but he uses his rival’s colours arbitrarily, as seen in the sitter’s peculiar blue lips and the chartreuse stripe dividing their highly abstracted face.

−2024

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