Artwork Page for Head (Tête)

Details / Information for Head (Tête)

Head (Tête)

1926

Pablo Picasso

(Spanish, 1881–1973)
Culture
Spain
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
Unframed: 21.6 x 14 cm (8 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift 2020.112
Catalogue raisonné
Zervos VII, 41
Copyright
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

Picasso was never an official member of the Surrealist movement, but he participated in their exhibitions; their leader André Breton wrote, “We proudly claim him as one of us.”

Description

The woman’s head in this painting contains multiple perspectives, most notably seen in the opposing profiles formed by the red and tan forms in the center, each with its own eye. A third eye appears on the left side of the face which can be read as a frontal view. While the woman’s features resemble those of Picasso’s lover, Marie Thérèse Walter, she was probably not the model since they did not meet until January 1927. The contrast in style between this painting and Picasso’s Head of a Boy (1905–6) is a testament to the artist’s boundless creativity.
Vertically-oriented oil painting depicting a highly abstracted face with chin-length hair, shown from multiple merging angles, outlined in black. Read and cream faces in profile face each-other, each with an almond-shaped eye, and the cream face upside down as the silhouetted faces intersect. The cream face's eye appears almost like a mouth for the frontal face, which has another eye in the upper left. Blue and white fields of paint intersect across the face.

Head (Tête)

1926

Pablo Picasso

(Spanish, 1881–1973)
Spain

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