1906

Woman with Loaves

Spanish, 1881 - 1973

Together with his companion Fernande Olivier, Picasso spent the summer of 1906 in Gósol, a village located in an isolated area in the Pyrenees mountains of northeastern Spain. Olivier would later remember it as a place where they had a chance to live in pure simplicity. In this portrayal of Olivier as a Gósol village woman, Picasso invokes a feeling of timelessness through his choice of subject and through his style, which looks back to a historically remote artistic source. Olivier’s rigidity and stance relate to a sculpture of the Virgin Mary made in Gósol in the 1100s.