The artwork “Woman Plaiting Her Hair” was created by the renowned artist Pablo Picasso in 1906. This piece is attributed to the neoclassical period in Picasso’s career and falls within the genre of nude painting (nu). The artwork represents a synthesis of historical painting techniques with an emergent personal style that would come to characterize Picasso’s versatile oeuvre.
In the artwork, a nude female figure is depicted in the act of plaiting or arranging her hair with her arms elevated behind her head, which contributes to a sense of intimacy and casualness in the moment captured. The figure’s body is presented with a softness of form that contrasts with the sharper, more defined linework used to contour the hair and the facial features. The color palette is predominantly composed of earthy tones set against a diffuse background that neither defines a clear spatial context nor distracts from the figure, thereby focusing the observer’s attention on the subject’s serene and personal gesture. Picasso’s approach to rendering the figure displays an engagement with classical representation, yet it retains a certain fluidity and simplification that hints at the artist’s progressive departure from traditional depiction, marking this work as an integral step towards the development of his unique style.
