Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Portrait of Olga
Pablo Picasso Spanish
Not on view
This work is one of several female heads that Picasso rendered during a summer stay in Fontainebleau with Olga and their newborn son. Although Olga was the inspiration for the work, if not the model, her features have been schematized and generalized. The piece consists of two sheets of paper attached to another sheet of paper that was then adhered to canvas. On one sheet, Picasso has depicted the woman’s face along with the collar of her dress, bringing both to a high degree of finish and creating the convincing illusion of dimensionality. On the second sheet, appended below the first, Picasso sketched in the figure’s arms and midsection with pencil. His use of collage interrupts the structural continuity of the work in much the same way that his use of two different levels of finish disrupts its formal consistency.
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