Woman with Bird, 1971

Pablo Picasso

Narrator: When Picasso painted Woman with Bird in spring 1971, he returned to a motif that had accompanied him since childhood – the bird.

Picasso’s father, the painter José Ruiz y Blasco, was known in Málaga for his dove paintings and had his son draw from them at an early age.

Half a lifetime later, Picasso’s dove of peace, created for the 1949 Peace Congress in Paris, became one of the most reproduced images of the twentieth century. When his daughter was born that same year, she was given the name Paloma – “dove” in Spanish.

During the 1960s and 70s, Picasso also kept caged birds in his home in Mougins; they moved freely in the rooms where he worked. In this context, the small pale bird in the painting appears as an everyday companion entering the pictorial space.

In this late work, bird and human meet in a quiet gesture. The colours are deep and subdued, the brushstrokes few but deliberate. The painting suggests a moment of closeness without a defined narrative.

Picasso often spoke of painting as something alive – an action unfolding in rhythm with life itself. In Woman with Bird, that idea becomes palpable: the image seems to shift gently between body and air, human presence and the natural world.