Paper

Student Artwork Guide

Head

Pablo Picasso, 1929

Name Class Date
Pablo Picasso, Head (1929). Reproduced for reference; rights reserved by the rights holder. See this canvas under a moving light: the drawing, the true colour under the varnish, the bare pigment

The facts

Artist
Pablo Picasso artsdot.com/en/artists/pablo-picasso/
Artist’s dates
1881 – 1973
Painted
1929
Medium
Acrylic On Canvas
Movement
Surrealism Dream logic painted with waking precision: impossible things shown as if they were ordinary.
Period
Renaissance
Artistic style
Cubist
Influences
André Breton
Notable elements or techniques
Two sculptures; Abstract shapes
Subject or theme
Dreams; Human figure

Copyright This work is still under copyright. Pablo Picasso died in 1973; copyright lasts 70 years after the artist’s death, so it remains in force until 2043. The image is shown here for classroom reference; rights remain with the rights holder.

Source: ArtsDot.com — accessed Sept. 27, 2026

Head — Pablo Picasso Part 1 · The artwork

In context

Head — Pablo Picasso

When was this painted?

  1. 1880
  2. 1890
  3. 1900
  4. 1910
  5. 1920
  6. 1930
  7. 1940
  8. 1950
  9. 1960
  10. 1970

Row above: the years. Row below: how old the artist was at the start and at the end of each span — 0 at birth, 92 at death.

Painted when the artist was 48. The artist lived to 92. 636 of the 1098 dated works by this artist in our catalogue came earlier.

Shaded: the lifetime of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) ▲ this work, 1929 every dated painting, decade by decade

First works: up to 1906 Main working years: 1906–1939 Late works: from 1939

Those three bands split the works this catalogue has a date for into a first quarter, a middle half and a last quarter. They are not the artist’s complete output: a thin stretch may be a gap in the record rather than a quiet spell. The same years with the artist’s life laid along them

Compare with

Pick one work above: name two things it shares with this one, and one thing that's different.

More works to set beside this one: artsdot.com/en/art/similar/pablo-picasso-head-8EWN5N-en/

Colours

Measured from the image

    Main colour

    Clay #c17653

    Catalogued palette

    • #C17653
    • #3C230F
    • #9C5428
    • #324D51

    These colours inside the artist’s whole palette Find other paintings by colour

    Palette
    Dark The dominant colour family in the image.
    Main colour name
    Clay
    Intensity
    Balanced How saturated and varied the colours are, from a single toned-down hue to many bright ones.
    Contrast
    Gentle How much the colours differ in lightness and saturation across the picture.
    Harmony
    Strong Color Unity How well the colours work together, from clashing to fully unified.
    Brightness
    Balanced How light or dark the picture reads overall, from deep shadow to bright highlight.
    Saturation
    Clear Color Presence How pure and strong the colours are, from near-grey to fully vivid.

    Where in the world is this painting looked at?

    • under 1%
    • 1–3%
    • 3–8%
    • 8–20%
    • 20% and over
    This painting alone has too few recorded visitors to map, so the plate reads every work by Pablo Picasso over the last twelve months — 106 countries in all. Where these figures come from

    The ten leading countries

    1. 1 China 38.6%
    2. 2 United States of America 6.7%
    3. 3 France 4.2%
    4. 4 Italy 4.2%
    5. 5 Germany 3.9%
    6. 6 Spain 3.6%
    7. 7 Brazil 2.4%
    8. 8 Japan 2.3%
    9. 9 India 2.1%
    10. 10 Singapore 1.8%
    11. · 96 other countries 30.2%

    Find the three darkest countries on the map. Is the museum that keeps this painting in any of them? Write down one reason people far away might look at it.

    The 20 most looked-at works by Pablo Picasso

    1. 1 Guernica, 1937 11.0%
    2. 2 Three Musicians, 1921 9.6%
    3. 3 The Young Ladies of Avignon, 1907 3.6%
    4. 4 Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1910 2.4%
    5. 5 A boy with pipe, 1905 1.6%
    6. 6 Two women running on the beach (The race), 1922 1.2%
    7. 7 Self-Portrait, 1906 0.8%
    8. 8 Women of Algiers (Version O), 1955 0.7%
    9. 9 Guitar player, 1910 0.5%
    10. 10 Saltimbanques (The Family of Saltimbanques), 1905 0.5%
    11. 11 La Vie (Life), 1903 0.5%
    12. 12 Sabartes, 1901 0.5%
    13. 13 Child with dove, 1901 0.5%
    14. 14 Mediterranean Landscape, 1952 0.4%
    15. 15 Friendship, 1908 0.4%
    16. 16 Acrobat and young harlequin, 1905 0.4%
    17. 17 Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937 0.4%
    18. 18 Woman with book, 1932 0.4%
    19. 19 Glass and Bottle of Suze, 1912 0.4%
    20. 649 Head, 1929 this painting 0.0%

    Together these works take 35.8% of all the attention this artist's paintings received over the last twelve months. The catalogue holds 2304 works by this artist, of which 1460 were looked at at least once. This painting ranks 649 of them, with 0.0% of that attention. The same counts, month by month

    Bars measure attention, not quality. Pick the work at the top and this one: name one thing that might make a painting famous beyond how well it is painted.

    Source: ArtsDot.com — accessed Sept. 27, 2026

    Head — Pablo Picasso Part 2 · In context

    About this artwork

    Head — Pablo Picasso

    Pablo Picasso: A Revolutionary Artist

    Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain, demonstrating artistic talent from a very young age. His father, José Ruiz y Blasco, was an art teacher who provided his son with early training. It’s said Picasso's first words were “piz, piz” – attempting to say ‘pencil’. Picasso quickly surpassed his father’s abilities, showing remarkable skill in naturalistic depictions. The family moved to A Coruña and later Barcelona after the tragic loss of Picasso’s sister. In Barcelona, he attended the School of Fine Arts but often clashed with traditional academic instruction. He briefly studied at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, finding it stifling and preferring to study masters like Velázquez and Goya independently.

    The Blue Period (1901-1906)

    Picasso’s artistic journey began with a profound exploration of emotion and melancholy. The Blue Period reflects this introspection through somber hues—primarily blues and greens—that convey themes of poverty, despair, and loneliness.

    Influenced by the works of Edvard Munch and Georges Roubaix, Picasso depicted subjects like beggars, prostitutes, and musicians with expressive brushstrokes and muted colors.

    Notable paintings from this period include “The Old Guitarist” and “La Vie,” showcasing Picasso’s masterful use of color to communicate psychological depth.

    The Rose Period (1904-1906)

    A shift towards optimism and tenderness characterizes the Rose Period, marked by warmer tones—pink, orange, and yellow—that evoke feelings of compassion and beauty.

    Picasso’s subjects transitioned to circus performers, acrobats, and musicians, capturing moments of grace and movement with delicate brushwork.

    “Family of Saltimbanques” exemplifies this stylistic evolution, demonstrating Picasso's ability to blend realism with expressive abstraction.

    Cubism (1907-1914)

    Picasso’s groundbreaking experimentation with Cubism revolutionized painting and sculpture. Collaborating closely with Georges Braque, he dismantled traditional perspective and representation, fracturing objects into geometric planes.

    The Analytical Cubist phase focused on dissecting forms into cubes and spheres, reducing color palettes to monochrome shades of brown and gray.

    “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” stands as a seminal work of Cubism, challenging conventional notions of beauty and portraying figures with fragmented perspectives.

    Surrealism (1929)

    Picasso's foray into Surrealism was influenced by his interactions with other artists and movements of the time. The early 20th century saw the rise of various avant-garde movements in Paris, including Cubism, which Picasso pioneered alongside Georges Braque. However, it was the surrealist movement, led by André Breton, that drew Picasso's attention towards exploring the realm of dreams and the subconscious.

    “Head” embodies this spirit by presenting a dreamlike scenario that defies conventional representation. The sculptures can be seen as symbolic representations of human figures, distorted to reflect the artist’s inner world.

    For those interested in exploring more of Picasso's works, Pablo Picasso: Head is available on AllPaintingsStore. Additionally, the museum guide The Musée National Picasso provides insights into the rich collection of modern and contemporary art.

    Source: ArtsDot.com — accessed Sept. 27, 2026

    Head — Pablo Picasso Part 3 · About this artwork

    Artist and museum

    Artist

    Pablo Picasso

    Born in Malaga, Spain

    The boy from Málaga

    A child's first words in Málaga were “piz, piz,” a small attempt at saying pencil. This early pull toward the lead and paper was nurtured by his father, José Ruiz y Blasco, who taught him the basics of figure drawing and oil painting. The boy learned to copy the masters and draw from plaster casts under a disciplined eye. As he grew, the family moved through A Coruña and Barcelona. These years were marked by the quiet weight of loss, particularly the death of his sister, Conchita, from diphtheria when she was only seven. Such shadows would later find their way into the heavy, blue-green tones of his early work.

    By thirteen, he was already taking entrance exams for advanced classes in Barcelona, finishing in a week what took others a month. His hands moved with a precision that even his father noticed, once seeing him paint over an unfinished sketch of a pigeon with such accuracy that the instructor realized the student had surpassed him. He eventually moved to Paris, a city where he would spend much of his adult life, constantly shifting his focus from one way of seeing to another.

    Shifting palettes and fractured forms

    The early twentieth century saw his work move through distinct phases of color and mood. There was the Blue Period, where the canvases were filled with beggars, the blind, and the lonely, rendered in somber shades of blue. This gave way to the Rose Period, a time when pinks, oranges, and reds appeared, often featuring the figures of circus performers like harlequins and acrobats. These years showed a man reacting to his own life and the world around him through the temperature of his palette.

    In 1907, the way he handled space changed fundamentally with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Influenced by African masks and Iberian sculpture, he began to break objects into geometric shapes. Alongside Georges Braque, he developed Cubism. This involved two main stages:

    Analytic Cubism: A method of fragmenting objects into muted, geometric pieces as if dissecting the form itself.

    Synthetic Cubism: An approach that brought in collage elements like newspaper clippings and fabric scraps to add texture and new layers.

    A life of constant change

    His work never settled into a single way of being. He explored Neoclassicism with large, monumental figures and later engaged with the imagery of Surrealism, using distorted perspectives to tap into the subconscious. The violence of the Spanish Civil War left its mark on his canvas in 1937 through Guernica. This large oil painting used a stark palette of black, white, and grey to show the suffering of a bombed town, featuring a gored horse, a bull, and screaming women. It remains a heavy, monochromatic response to the chaos of war.

    In his later years, he continued to experiment with ceramics, sculpture, and printmaking. He even created large-scale public works, such as the 1967 steel sculpture in Chicago, which was inspired by the head of his Afghan Hound, Kabul. He died in Mougins, France, leaving behind a massive collection of work that spans over seventy-six years of experimentation.

    Where to read more

    Find this online

    QR code linking to the download page for Head

    artsdot.com/en/art/download/pablo-picasso-head-8EWN5N-en/

    Cite this artwork

    MLA
    Picasso, Pablo. Head. 1929, https://artsdot.com/en/art/pablo-picasso-head-8EWN5N-en/
    APA
    Picasso, Pablo (1929). Head [Painting]. https://artsdot.com/en/art/pablo-picasso-head-8EWN5N-en/
    Chicago
    Pablo Picasso. Head. 1929. https://artsdot.com/en/art/pablo-picasso-head-8EWN5N-en/
    Harvard
    Picasso, Pablo (1929) Head. Available at: https://artsdot.com/en/art/pablo-picasso-head-8EWN5N-en/

    Source: ArtsDot.com — accessed Sept. 27, 2026

    Head — Pablo Picasso Part 4 · Artist and museum

    Look closely

    Head — Pablo Picasso

    Look closely

    Answer in your own words. There are no wrong answers here — only answers you can explain.

    1. What catches your eye first, and why?
    2. Which colours or shapes create the mood — and what is that mood?
    3. Our catalogue files this work under: sculptures, abstraction, symbolism. Do you agree? What would you add, or take away?
    4. Look back at Guernica (1937), earlier in this guide. Name two things it shares with this work, and one that is different.
    5. Surrealism: Dream logic painted with waking precision: impossible things shown as if they were ordinary. Where can you see that in this work?

    Your response

    Write a short paragraph about this artwork. Use the facts from the earlier parts of this guide, and your answers above.

    Source: ArtsDot.com — accessed Sept. 27, 2026

    Head — Pablo Picasso Part 5 · Look closely

    Art quiz

    Head — Pablo Picasso

    How well do you know this artwork?

    Tick one answer for each of the 5 questions below. Each has exactly one correct answer.

    1. 1. What artistic movement is Pablo Picasso’s ‘Head’ primarily associated with?

      • A Cubism
      • B Impressionism
      • C Renaissance

    2. 2. In what year was Picasso's painting 'Head' created?

      • A 1890
      • B 1929
      • C 1957

    3. 3. The sculpture in ‘Head’ represents what symbolic element?

      • A A portrait of Picasso himself
      • B An idealized human figure
      • C A depiction of a mythological deity

    4. 4. Which museum houses a significant collection of modern and contemporary art, including works by surrealist artists like Picasso?

      • A The Louvre
      • B The Metropolitan Museum of Art
      • C Musée National Picasso

    5. 5. What is the primary technique employed in Picasso’s ‘Head’, contributing to its dreamlike quality?

      • A Detailed realism
      • B Pointillism
      • C Abstract geometric shapes

    My score: ____ out of 5

    Answer key — for the teacher

    This starts a fresh printed page, so it can simply be left out of the copies.

    1A · 2B · 3B · 4C · 5C

    Check any answer against the catalogue record for this painting

    Source: ArtsDot.com — accessed Sept. 27, 2026

    Head — Pablo Picasso Part 6 · Art quiz

    Questions & Answers

    What luminance does "Head" by Pablo Picasso have?

    "Head" by Pablo Picasso has a soft shadow luminance. Luminance describes how much light the colors appear to reflect.

    What explains the copyright situation of "Head" by Pablo Picasso?

    "Head" by Pablo Picasso is still protected by copyright. Copyright terms are measured from the artist's death, and Pablo Picasso died in 1973.

    What national origin stands behind the Surrealism of "Head"?

    The Surrealism work "Head" was made by an artist born in Spain.