Image: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
View source →Seated Bather
Pablo Picasso, 1930
Technical Details
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
163.2 × 129.5 cm (64.3 × 51 in)
Style
Surrealism / Painting
Decade
1930s
About This Work
A female figure sits on a beach, her body transformed into a monstrous assemblage of bone-like forms — angular, hard, and predatory. The figure's face has become a kind of praying mantis head, all sharp angles and hollow sockets. The work is one of Picasso's most extreme expressions of his 'bone period,' when his figures became skeletal, threatening constructions that seem to devour the space around them.
The Seated Bather belongs to a series of beach figure paintings from the late 1920s and early 1930s that reflect the deterioration of Picasso's marriage to Olga. The monstrous, predatory female figure is widely interpreted as a portrait of marital hostility, the beach setting — associated with leisure and pleasure — made sinister by the figure's threatening form.
Current Location
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA
Public Collection — Open to visitors
Visit museum website →Valuation & Provenance
2026 Estimated Value
Priceless / Not for sale
* Estimates are based on comparable auction results and market analysis. Not a formal appraisal.
Last Known Sale
No public auction record — held in permanent museum collection
Personal Photo — Museo Picasso Málaga
Photographed in person at the Museo Picasso in Málaga, Spain.
Bather (Baigneuse)
Photo: Dr. Eric Madrid, Museo Picasso, Málaga, Spain
View all Málaga photos →Keywords
Continue Exploring
Related Artworks
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Nude in an Armchair
1929 · same style · same era
Bather with Beach Ball
1932 · same style · same era
Nude on a Black Couch
1932 · same style · same era
Head of a Woman (Marie-Thérèse)
1932 · same style · same era
Seated Woman with Wristwatch
1932 · same style · same era
Reading (La Lecture)
1932 · same style · same era
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