Description
Picasso’s Salomé sets an energetic dancing figure against the stillness of a seated king and the people beside him. Her raised leg and lifted arms send fine lines outward across the otherwise open sheet. Near the center below, a head on a platter makes the biblical subject unmistakably darker than the graceful movement first suggests. The contrast between performance and its consequence gives the spare composition its tension.
Picasso created the drypoint design in 1905; it was later published in 1913 as part of the Saltimbanques series. The technique lets him work with an immediacy close to drawing, using slender contours rather than a heavily modeled setting. The dancing body and watchful figures carry the narrative with very little scenery. Its delicacy makes the encounter more unsettling, holding theatrical display and violence within the same quiet field of paper.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Pablo Picasso collection.
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