Nude Woman in a Red Armchair (Marie-Thérèse Walter) by Pablo Picasso, Oil on canvas – 1932
Joyful Happy Art, TALKING ART with Paul Woods
Strong bold flowing rhythmic and echoing sensual curves, voluptuous and beautifully erotic, the eroticism of deep love and passion.
A nude woman sits in a chair in the corner of a room. The wooden chair has scrolling arms a red cushion seat and a red padded backrest with brass studs. She is wearing a necklace of green beads.
The close-cropped portrait format cuts the figure at the knees maintaining a sensuous, curvaceous dynamic of the nude figure of Marie-Thérèse Walter, a young woman, model and muse to Picasso. The background is dark, black and grey colour. Black lines of wall panelling converge to focus on the extraordinary and complex face. These angles and straight lines of the corner and chair’s back contrast with the voluptuous curvaceous forms of the body and chair flowing, echoing, enhancing and complimenting the sensuosity of this joyous evocation of love and desire. The chair echoes and flows as if the very chair itself is embracing or containing the figure, emphasising desire.
The colours are flat with confident lines, the paintwork is spontaneous, deft, rapid, free-flowing and worked wet-in-wet. Its freedom of execution adds to the flow and dynamic of a joyful frisson of passion.
The head and face is a complex device. The passive face is a portrait that transforms into two faces of lovers kissing. Picasso himself is secretly kissing his secret lover. Her arms and hands reach up bringing attention to the face/kissing lovers. The Picasso half of the face is light blue as is the right arm suggesting the lovers embracing, an erotic secret union like the ethereal seduction of Jupiter and Io, (a painting by Correggio). Jupiter, the king of gods in Greco/Roman mythology, conjured a dark cloud in broad daylight to keep his desire a secret, fearing his wife’s jealousy. Picasso saw himself as the God dominating his mistress with genuine love. Picasso had a typical Latin temperament of entitlement to sex, accepted in his day which is seen as unacceptable and incongruous in our contemporary age of equality and feminism.
I just adore the way Picasso transforms and reinvents art. I revel in the dynamic of curvaceous passive sensuality oozing from the figure and the chair itself. It is lively, loving and passionate. The colours are joyful and I find it an uplifting experience as an image of love should be.
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