Self-Portrait

Picasso painted this self-portrait after spending the summer of 1906 in Gósol, a small village in the Spanish Pyrenees. The stay has become synonymous with a decisive new direction in his style, one that moved toward simplified forms with a decidedly archaic and sculptural appearance. This work, painted as the artist turned twenty‑five (about the same time he completed his portrait of Gertrude Stein), was followed immediately by his large "Self‑Portrait with Palette" (Philadelphia Museum of Art), perhaps a pendant to Gertrude Stein.

Credit: Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998