I Like This Painting

Pabo Picasso
Woman and Child on the Seashore, 1921

I like this painting - and here are some reasons why:

• The figures fill the space in the picture plane so that the painting is about the relationship between the woman and child.
• The lines of the woman's body are for the most part on horizontal - while the child's is at an active diagonal or upward movement.
• Picasso used quite a limited color palette in this painting. It is strikingly different from his Cubist paintings. It looks as if Picasso used an underpainting using burnt sienna and then gradually built up the painting using other colors (sparingly).
• The darkest colors are in the woman's clothing, around the baby's head and in the woman's hair. These lines give a groundedness to the large figure of the woman.