Nude under a Pine Tree

For many artists living amid the destruction and rebuilding of postwar Europe, artworks of the past offered a sense of continuity and order. In Nude under a Pine Tree, Pablo Picasso looked to the long tradition of figurative painting, including the female nudes of Francisco de Goya. In contrast to his predecessors, however, Picasso placed the monumental figure on rocky terrain, rather than on a plush chaise. He also used bold, modernist forms that reference his own earlier artistic styles: the flattened face, segmented legs and torso, and multiple viewpoints recall some of his Cubist works, and the color palette evokes his classical style of the 1920s.