Woman's Head (Fernande), 1909 by Pablo Picasso

Picasso sculpted Woman's Head (Fernande) out of clay in Paris in the fall of 1909. It was made directly after the artist spent the summer in Horta de Ebro, Spain, where he painted numerous portraits of his companion, Fernande Olivier. Woman's Head (Fernande) shows Picasso working through ideas that would become central to Cubism. The sculpture maintains the basic shape of a head, but its projected and recessed planes break down solid mass into shifting volumes that are suggestive of different points of view.

Picasso's dealer, Ambroise Vollard, bought the original clay version from Picasso in 1910, and with the artist's permission he arranged for it to be cast in plaster and then in bronze.