Woman with a Mandolin 1909

This is Woman with a Mandolin, painted by Pablo Picasso, and now hanging in the Hermitage Museum. You can see the subdued colours and the way the brushstrokes build up the picture plane. I can imagine Picasso in his studio, thinking, how do I make a person with shapes? How can I create the feeling of someone playing music? There’s a real tenderness in the way he's constructed the figure, placing the hands so delicately on the mandolin. It’s like he’s trying to understand her, bit by bit, as he’s building up the image, almost like a puzzle. I think he was interested in how we see things, how our minds put things together. You see this interest in deconstructing forms in all of his work, and you can spot it in the work of Braque, too. They were constantly inspiring each other to see and paint in new ways. Painting isn’t just about showing something as it is, it’s about exploring how we experience it. Isn’t that cool?