Woman Dressing Her Hair 1940

Picasso made this painting, Woman Dressing Her Hair, with oils, and what strikes me is how he’s not just painting a body, but building one. Look at the way he’s used these blocky forms and geometric shapes to define the figure. There's this real sense of volume, of weight. I’m particularly drawn to the way the light falls on the woman’s breast. The paint is laid on so thick there, almost sculptural, with these distinct facets catching the light. It’s like he's trying to capture not just how something looks, but how it feels to hold it, to sculpt it. There's a bit of Léger in this, maybe some Braque too. It feels like Picasso’s in conversation with his contemporaries, wrestling with the same questions about form and representation. This work feels like an invitation to see the world not as a collection of fixed objects, but as a series of possibilities.