Oil on canvas
92 x 73 cm
Hilti Art Foundation, Schaan
Picasso painted Visage gris foncé au chapeau blanc (Femme au chapeau) during his approximately ten-year partnership with Françoise Gilot. She was pregnant at the time and gave birth to their son Claude just a few weeks later on 15 May 1947.
Untold variations on the human body and the head testify to Picasso's creative energy, described by Werner Spies as trying out "every conceivable modality of deformation". In portraying and characterising specific individuals, the artist was not necessarily bent on achieving a discernible likeness.
Visage gris foncé au chapeau blanc is restricted to a dark palette in black and white. Picasso pictures a woman with a white hat saucily perched on her head, setting a strong accent against the almost black ground of the painting. The artist had a penchant for painting his models with extravagant headgear.
Visage gris takes both a linear and sculptural turn while the colouring clearly follows a painterly trajectory. In keeping with the multiple views of Cubism, eyes, nose and profile point in entirely different directions. The mouth features conspicuously, taking the shape of two circles.
The pictorial space is cryptically implied by the mere hint of a window, a mirror or a picture frame, as well as a piece of square furniture. It communicates an atmosphere of silence without resonance. The sitter, isolated in stark, hermetic darkness, is thrown back on herself. This ultimately existential situation, at an infinite remove from time, acts as a stark foil for the coquettish and short-lived trendiness of the hat. The artist's delight in extravagant shapes applies not only to the hat but, in playful irony, to the deformed physiognomy of the face as well.
Uwe Wieczorek
"In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing."
Pablo Picasso
'Picasso Speaks', The Arts, New York, May 1923, pp. 315–326; reprinted in Alfred Barr: Picasso. Fifty Years of His Art, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1946, pp. 270–271.
