Pablo Picasso – Femme au béret bleu assise dans un fauteuil gris, manches rouges (1937)

In this quietly complex portrait, Pablo Picasso renders Dora Maar—his lover, muse, and one of the most intellectually formidable women in his life. Painted in 1937, Femme au béret bleu assise dans un fauteuil gris, manches rouges (translated: Woman in a Blue Beret Seated in a Gray Armchair, Red Sleeves) is a moment of psychological stillness just before the emotional volatility of his Weeping Woman series takes over.

Here, Dora is both composed and fractured: her face split into dual angles—profile and frontal—characteristic of Picasso’s late Cubist phase. But unlike earlier Cubist portraits that reveled in fragmentation, this work breathes with a more emotional restraint. Its flattened planes feel almost architectural, constructed from pastel blocks of lavender, sage, and crimson. Her beret and garment details are stylized into costume-like symbols of identity, perhaps referencing her Parisian surrealist roots.

The composition subtly frames her within a painted "window," suggesting not just containment, but introspection. This is Dora not as the anguished muse of later paintings, but as a poised, enigmatic presence—calm before the storm.

I’m drawn to how the painting balances opposites: softness and structure, calm and tension, intimacy and distance.

Artwork Details

• Artist: Pablo Picasso

• Title: Femme au béret bleu assise dans un fauteuil gris, manches rouges

• Year: 1937

• Medium: Oil on canvas

• Dimensions: 100 × 80 cm (39 3/8 × 31 1/2 inches)

• Muse: Dora Maar

• Source: © 2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso / ARS, New York. Photo: Sandra Pointet

📍 Currently on view at Gagosian New York:
Picasso: Tête‑à‑tête (Apr 18 – Jul 3, 2025)