Pablo Picasso's Head of a Woman
by Lillian Bonar
Essay: Pablo Picasso's Head of a Woman
Pages: 11
Rating: 3 stars
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• Pablo Picasso's Head of a Woman.pdf
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While visiting the Norton Museum, there were two works of art that were very interesting. The first work of art is a
sculpture by Pablo Picasso called, Head of a Woman (Fernande). It was made in 1909 when he was in Paris. When
he made this sculpture he was in the cubism period. Picasso sculpted this sculpture of bronze.
While looking at this sculpture it is transformed every time you move your own head, walk around it, and bend
closer. It just has a way of changing shape. While looking at it, it first appeared to me as a man or some kind of
creature. Looking at the name, one would realize what the sculpture is. The sculpture was a woman. It has a lot of
rough and sharp points, but the surface was very smooth. It is kind of disturbing on how Picasso seems to see
beneath the skin. He reveals the tendons in Fernande's neck. The fractured texture of Fernande's face, her hair a
system of gorges and upland ridges, is a metaphor for the way we experience another person. (Hughs) Like
Rembrandt's most intimate portraits, it is about the mystery of being close to another human being. (Cooper)
Picasso makes you recognize this by inviting your eye down into those channels and crevices, until you feel you
are inside Fernande's head. You can never exhaust the richness of this head. (Hughs)
The subject of this sculpture is Fernande Olivier. She was Picasso's lover. Fernande’s real name was Amelie Lang.
She had worked as an artist's model in Montmartre and was an aspiring painter. They had spent the summer of
1909 in the Spanish mountains, where Picasso painted Fernande in a similarly way. He made this head almost as
soon as he returned to Paris. Picasso spoke about being caught by her beauty and began a long term relationship
with Fernande Olivier, however by 1909, when he made this head the strain in their relationship was showing. By
1912, the relationship had ended.
Picasso broke the tradition in 1909 in creating Head of a Woman (Fernande). It is considered the first cubist
sculpture. Cubism was an art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture in the early 20th
century. The idea of cubism is that instead of viewing subjects from a single fixed angle, the artist breaks them up
into several different aspects/faces of the subject so they can be seen simultaneously. (Penrose) He molded
Fernande's head in clay, and then made two plaster casts from which...