Seated woman 1909

This ‘Seated Woman’ by Picasso is a curious meeting of swift strokes. Look closely, and you can almost see Picasso’s hand moving across the canvas, shaping the figure out of thin, watery paint. I wonder what he was thinking as he built up the layers, this veiled figure emerging from a haze of green and brown. You get the sense that he's trying to distill the essence of a woman, her form simplified, almost geometric. See how the planes of color create a sense of depth and volume, even though the brushwork is so loose? There’s a real tension between representation and abstraction, a dance between seeing and knowing. It reminds me of other paintings where artists are grappling with how to capture something real. It's like Picasso's asking: can you find the truth of a person in the simplest shapes and colors?