Homme à l’épée 1969

This character with a sword was painted by Picasso, and, boy, is it a strange one! I can just imagine Picasso working on it; he probably repainted the figure over and over to arrive at this final image. It's got these crazy colors, with the red and black background, and the yellow coat—thick paint, by the way—with a sort of zig-zag pattern. And then there’s the sword, held in this weird way, so formally. It looks like a prop. I get the sense that Picasso was playing with different styles and ideas here. He made the painting like a theatre. It's all about the process, right? You just keep going and going, trying things out, messing up, starting over until something emerges. And in the end, you create something totally unique that no one else could have made. It's the best.