Head of a Woman

Pablo Picasso, spring 1909

Technical Details

About This Work

Opaque gouache turns a female head into a broad, forceful arrangement of color and form. The work retains the directness of portraiture while testing the simplification and structural emphasis that soon became central to Cubism. Picasso's choice of gouache on paper shapes how the subject is encountered: the material, scale, and method are not incidental but part of the artwork's visual argument. The record is held by Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA, whose direct object page verifies the canonical title, date, medium, dimensions, and collection attribution. This catalog entry therefore distinguishes documented facts from interpretive reading and directs visitors to the institutional record for further research.

MoMA dates this drawing to spring 1909 and records its gouache medium, dimensions, and May Collection provenance. It is a distinct object from Picasso's other similarly titled heads and from the existing 1908 painting Woman's Head. The work belongs in a broader account of Picasso's sustained shifts among drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, and sculpture rather than in a simplified single-style narrative. Its museum object number and rights statement allow the gallery to provide reliable scholarship without presenting an unlicensed reproduction as if it were freely reusable. The site will retain the official collection link as the authoritative factual reference and use a rights-aware fallback for the image display.

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Valuation & Provenance

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