Woman sitting in an armchair 1912

Somewhere, at some time, Picasso created this painting of a woman sitting in an armchair. Just imagine him, surrounded by the smells of paint and turpentine, wrestling with how to represent her. With its muted browns and greys, the painting feels like an exploration of form and space. It looks like he’s pulling apart the image, breaking her down into geometric shapes, and then reassembling her in a way that shows us different viewpoints all at once. I'm thinking that maybe he wanted to capture not just what she looked like, but how we perceive her over time, almost like a memory shifting in our minds. It makes me think about Cezanne, how he was trying to find the underlying structure of things, but Picasso takes it even further. All those angles! It is like the inside of her head rendered in paint. Painting is such a cool way to have a conversation across time, isn't it?