Poster / Picasso / La Lecture / 24 x 30 cm
In love with Marie-Therese Walter, Picasso began a prolific series featuring her face and profile, which gradually became more lyrical and harmonious. It was a return to the recognized symbols of beauty, as the voluptuous curves and sensations of female sensuality began to fill the canvas again.
The resulting absence of vulgarity is replaced by a mood of dreamy trance and introspection, whether reading a book, as in this case, contemplating one's own reflection, or resting, as in Asleep (1932). The prototype woman now begins to assume a new and much more substantial form and, like Picasso's adolescent lover, embarks on an adolescent journey of sexual and psychological realization.
The most important development of this phase is the formalized experimentation with colour, choice of pigments and application, as with Henri Matisse. Playing with the dynamic polarization of red and green and the incorporation of patterns like Matisse, Picasso brings a new force as color to the canvas. The woman with the significant heart-shaped face is a further development of synthetic cubist mise-en-scène. The closeness of their intertwined color segments flattens the spatial depth, although the artist attempts to make the image appear three-dimensional by painting in a corner. The intensity and contrast of the broad vertical stripes of green and yellow create a tonal framework that holds the fluid lines of the female form in place.
Original work : 1932 - Oil on canvas / 68 x 130 cm
