1906

Seated Nude and Standing Nude

Spanish, 1881 - 1973

This drawing epitomizes Picasso's response to an exhibition of ancient Iberian sculpture excavated from Osuna in southern Spain, which was held at the Louvre Museum in Paris in the spring of 1906. From the Iberian carvings the artist derived the large, heavy-lidded eyes, the strongly marked brows that continue into the nose in one continuous curve, the long ears, and the inscrutable, masklike cast of the facial features of the seated female nude. However, the hieratic pose of the standing figure and the position of the bent arms of both women suggest that he was also looking at ancient Greek sculpture.