Picassoís Passion ëFernandeí Exhibit Details Lover as Subject of Art Experiments by Heather Nalbone By now, thereís a good chance most local museum-goers have already meandered through the three-room tribute to Pablo Picassoís early works at the National Gallery of Art. Those who havenít seen it yet should. Anyone who fails to visit the exhibit before it ends on Jan. 18 will miss quite a show. Even art history buffs would be hard-pressed to find a Picasso exhibit that matches this one. Curator Jeffrey Weiss got the idea for ìPicasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivierî when the museum inherited an early cast of the famed ìHead of a Woman (Fernande)î sculpture early last year. The sculpture is a portrait of one of Picassoís earliest mistresses, ìla belle Fernande.î The two spent a summer together in the tiny Spanish mountain village town of Horta de Ebro in 1909, where Fernandeówhether willingly or not is unknownóbecame the subject of experimentation for the artist as he sought out new methods for painting. Picasso was a ripe 28 at the time, just on the brink of cutting-edge cubism. It would be wrong to say that the ìHead of a Womanî sculpture, along with two more castsóo ne bronze and one plasteróare the focal points of the exhibit. Although Weiss made it clear that the compilation is intended purely to demonstrate how Picasso developed methods for cubism, the real nucleus of this show is Fernande. No other person or place experienced such prominence in Picassoís works, and no exhibit has ever before entirely focused on this one mistress. There are 50 paintings on display as well as several sketches and studies, all focusing on the same object and arranged in chronological order. Getting all of the pieces together in one place was more difficult than is revealed by the small gallery on the museumís sprawling mezzanine level. Putting the exhibit together required borrowing and convening virtually every surviving piece from the roughly 10 months that Picasso spent painting his first love. The effect is a compilation that, although at first seemingly repetitious, allows for a deeper-than-usual glimpse into the psyche of both the artist and his young lover. The exhibit is likely to enrapture even those who generally have a hard time ascertaining the mood or symbolism intended by cubist works. (I admittedly have a difficult time with this myself even after numerous lectures and a half-day visit to the Museu Picasso in Barcelona.) The works here are less ìchoppyî than some of the artistís later paintings, with the angles and lines of Fernandeís facial expressions rather clearly depicting the perched lips and gloomy gaze of a downtrodden woman. ìSeated Womanî is one such oil painting. There is not a single linear component in the piece, and yet Fernandeís dispositionóor at least what Picasso intended it to beóis immediately observable. Slanted lines and shadows surrounding the ladyís eyes communicate a distressed, perhaps pleading, look. Her angled torso is painted in angelic creams and beiges offset by light grays and silvers, producing the soft nature of a beautiful woman. If the rest of the paintings seem to portray a woman in the midst of sadness, itís because they do. Fernande battled illness, most likely caused by a kidney ailment, throughout her time with Picasso. Her gloom is conveyed through the twists and rotations of a disassembled body, not to mention a consistently down-turned head and gaze. The prominent colors in most of the oil canvases are similar to those in ìSeated Woman,î with varying shades of beiges, light blues, charcoals and greens filling the galleryís walls. The renditions become more abstract toward the end of the display, namely in a series of nude sketches and paintings, one of which contains the darkest color scheme in the gallery. One might surmise that the womanís unhappiness was due in part because she became an experiment of sorts for the young, self-involved artist as he explored ways to break from traditional renaissance art. At the National Gallery, visitors get to catch a glimpse of this experimental process. Although little is revealed about Fernandeís life, much of her character is made known through at least one manís eyes. "Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivierî runs through Jan. 18 at the National Gallery of Art, Third and Ninth Streets at Constitution Avenue, NW. For more information, please call (202) 737-4215 or visit www.nga.gov. Heather Nalbone is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.