Executed on 8 March 1949, Figure composée II belongs to the important body of lithographs created by Pablo Picasso during his post-war collaboration with Fernand Mourlot in Paris. The composition is understood to depict Françoise Gilot and was one of three markedly different portraits Picasso made of her that day, shortly before the birth of their daughter, Paloma. This impression is signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 50. It was printed by Mourlot and is recorded as Bloch 597, Mourlot 166 and Rau 447.

Picasso combines frontal and profile views within a single, tightly compressed head. One eye confronts the viewer directly, while the nose, mouth and surrounding contours turn laterally across the sheet. Broad areas of black are set against exposed white paper, and dense passages of hatching articulate the hair and facial structure. These overlapping viewpoints prevent the figure from resolving into a stable likeness, requiring the eye continually to reconstruct its features.

Picasso had renewed his engagement with lithography in 1945 and subsequently worked closely with Mourlot to test the medium’s technical and expressive possibilities. In the present work, a brush-and-ink drawing was transferred from lithographic paper to stone, retaining the immediacy of the original marks while enabling the image to be printed. Gilot became one of the principal subjects of this period, although Picasso’s portraits of her vary considerably in appearance, treating likeness as something mutable rather than fixed. Art Gallery of South Australia

Through its fusion of multiple viewpoints, Figure composée II revisits principles central to Picasso’s earlier Cubist practice while exploiting the tonal contrasts particular to lithography. The work is therefore both an intimate record of Gilot’s presence and a sustained enquiry into the instability of perception: the face remains recognisable, yet its identity is assembled from competing visual fragments.

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