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Head of a Woman (Study for "Nude with Drapery")

Paris, 1907
Not on view
This sheet was initially bound into Carnet Dix (Notebook Ten), a sketchbook that Picasso filled with drawings and watercolors related to two major oil paintings of 1907: Les demoiselles d’Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Nude with Drapery (The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg). Here, Picasso presents the face as a shallow mask, with the simple ovoid eyes reading as open or downcast. The reduction of the facial features to elementary geometric shapes and the striations on the flesh, which serve as both decorative details and shadowed cross-hatching, were influenced by Picasso’s encounter with African art at the Musée du Trocadéro in Paris.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Head of a Woman (Study for "Nude with Drapery")
  • Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France)
  • Date: Paris, 1907
  • Medium: Gouache and watercolor on tan wove paper; subsequently mounted to panel
  • Dimensions: 12 3/16 x 9 7/16 in. (31 x 24 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection, Gift of Leonard A. Lauder, 2016
  • Object Number: 2016.237.30
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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