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Girl Before a Mirror is portrait of Picasso's mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter, which he created on 14 March 1932. It is signed by Picasso in white paint in the top left corner and dated on the reverse. The painting measures 162.3 cm x 130.2 cm and was created using oils on canvas. It is an image of a woman looking at her reflection in a mirror, which reveals a darker version of herself. The woman's face has been divided into two halves, one of which is presented in a calm, lilac hue, while the other is painted roughly in bright, yellow paint. The reflection offers another representation of the subject, in which she appears to be older and her face sunken, perhaps as an image of her mortality. In the background a vivid diamond pattern completes the scene, which is reminiscent of the harlequin with which Picasso so often identified in previous works.The composition is a complex arrangement of luminous colours and lines, compartmentalised into sections, which has resulted in the painting being likened to a stained-glass window or cloisonné enamel. Multiple layers in the paint show that it was reworked by Picasso to produce the final dense and compressed image. In this composition, Picasso used elements of Cubism to break apart the form of the woman. She is portrayed from the side, yet her reflection depicts her from the front. The organic nature of this portrait also displays a Surrealist style dating from the 1920s and 1930s.Picasso's use of bright colours in this painting is reminiscent of the work of other artists. This period in his artistic career is often referred to as his "Gauguin phase", due to the use of the harmonising tones of lavender and yellow used in the woman's face, which can be seen in Paul Gauguin's artwork. The patterns and bright colours present in this painting have also been likened to the work of Henri Matisse.Girl Before a Mirror is an illustration of Picasso's departure from traditional painting techniques, such as texture and tonality in the representation of the subject. In contrast to these traditions, Picasso depicted his muse with flat blocks of colour covering an entire spectrum. There is little use of light and dark that would normally be used to convey the volume of objects and no representation of texture, such as the woman's hair or skin. Picasso instead emphasised the two-dimensional nature of the canvas and paint. The image is abstract, as it depicts the woman's form unrealistically, using curvilinear lines and circular shapes to convey the fullness of her anatomy and her fertility. The composition has been carefully constructed to offset the curvilinear forms of the woman's figure with the geometric diamond pattern that frames her.
Surrealist Paul Gauguin's Paul Gauguin Cubism Marie-Thérèse Walter Henri Matisse