Picasso, Woman with a Comb

This painting captures Picasso's transition from his Rose Period into Cubism. The palette leans toward red, but the woman's arm is simplified into a cylinder, and her breast and pubic area are reduced to near-triangular shapes rather than rendered with any delicacy. The image reads as flat rather than three-dimensional, reflecting an experiment Picasso was pursuing at the time, influenced by Cezanne, of viewing an object from multiple angles and fusing those views into a single form rather than reproducing what the eye actually sees.

Painted in 1906, it marks the opening move in an experiment that would culminate, just a year later in 1907, in Picasso's most famous Cubist work, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.