Woman by the dresser 1936

Here is a Picasso painting, "Woman by the Dresser," made with oil on canvas. Picasso's painting is built up through thin layers of shifting planes and angular forms. It's almost as if he’s trying to show us the inside and outside of this woman all at once. Look at that mirror, reflecting not just her face but also some deeper truth, some hidden dimension of her being. I can imagine Picasso, in his studio, circling around this canvas, maybe chain-smoking and lost in thought, adding a line here, a shadow there. I wonder what he was thinking, feeling, as he laid down these strokes. Notice how the color palette, a mix of blues and grays, hints at a somber mood, and the way the black outlines carve out the shapes, giving them a solid presence. That simple, almost childlike rendering of the chair, for example, feels so intentional, so full of meaning. Picasso’s work feels like a constant conversation with painting itself. We’re all in this together, trying to figure out what it means to be human, one brushstroke at a time.