The Shadow

Pablo Picasso, 1953

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About This Work

The Shadow depicts Picasso's own shadow falling across a sleeping woman — Françoise Gilot — in a sun-drenched room. The shadow of the artist looms over the vulnerable, sleeping figure, creating a meditation on the relationship between creator and subject, between presence and absence, between the artist's power and the model's vulnerability. It is one of the most psychologically complex of Picasso's late works.

Painted in December 1953, The Shadow was made shortly after Françoise Gilot left Picasso — the first time a woman had left him rather than the other way around. The painting can be read as a meditation on loss, on the artist's relationship to his subject, and on the nature of artistic creation itself.

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