Modernism

Girl before a Mirror

Pablo Picasso, 1932

Girl before a Mirror is a 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso of his young lover Marie-Thérèse Walter gazing into a tall mirror. Painted in March 1932 in Boisgeloup, it is in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Artist: Pablo Picasso
Date: 1932
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 162.3 × 130.2 cm
Collection: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, United States
Movement: Modernism

Girl before a Mirror is one of the central paintings Pablo Picasso made of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the young woman who was his secret lover from 1927. He completed it in March 1932, the same winter as Le Rêve, and the canvas, 162.3 by 130.2 centimeters, has been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1938, the gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim.

What you are looking at

A woman on the left reaches across the picture to hold the frame of a tall swinging mirror, a cheval glass, on the right. Her reflection looks back at her from inside its oval frame.

The woman herself is drawn with heavy black outlines and bright, flat color. Her head is a double image: a smooth lilac profile, calm and pale, joined to a frontal face in hot yellow and orange, which looks rouged and made up. A halo of white surrounds her head. Her body is a sequence of curves: round breasts, a belly marked with concentric circles, and a torso striped like a bathing suit.

The reflection is different. Its face is darker and more shadowed, with red, blue and green planes, and the body below is distorted, the colors reversed and murkier. The woman's arm crosses into the mirror as if to embrace or grasp her own image.

Behind both figures is a wallpaper of diamonds in red, yellow and green, each with a dark dot at its center, a loud harlequin pattern that flattens the whole space.

How it was made

Picasso borrowed the thick black lines dividing areas of color from stained glass and cloisonné enamel, and the result has the glow of a church window. Some areas are painted thinly; others, such as the wallpaper, are reworked in heavy layers. He signed it in the upper left corner.

What does it mean?

Picasso left no explanation, so readings come from art historians. The subject belongs to an old tradition: the woman at her mirror, from Venus at her toilette to the vanitas image in which a mirror shows youth and beauty fading. Many writers read the two faces as day and night, or as the public, made-up self and the private, inner one. Others see the reflection as a premonition of age or mortality, a skull-like shadow behind the young face. The emphasis on round, fertile forms has also been read as a celebration of Marie-Thérèse's body and Picasso's desire for her.

What is certain is that the picture is about looking: a woman examining herself, and an artist examining her.

Where to see it

The painting is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among the museum's best-known works. For more from these years, see Picasso's Weeping Woman and our famous paintings of women.

Questions & answers

Where is Girl before a Mirror by Picasso?

It is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which received it in 1938 as a gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim. Picasso painted it in March 1932, and it is usually on view in the museum's galleries of early twentieth-century painting.

Who is the woman in Girl before a Mirror?

She is Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso's young lover, whom he met in Paris in 1927 and kept secret for years while still married to Olga Khokhlova. Her rounded features and blond hair appear in many of his paintings and sculptures of the early 1930s, including Le Rêve.

What is the meaning of Girl before a Mirror?

Picasso did not explain it. Art historians link it to the old theme of a woman at her mirror, including vanitas images about fading beauty. The two faces are often read as day and night, or outer and inner self, and the dark reflection as a hint of age or mortality.

More by the artist

Pablo Picasso

All works →

A woman in a red hat with a blue flower holds a white handkerchief to her face, which is broken into yellow, green and white planes, with black tears — Pablo Picasso, The Weeping Woman, 1937 — The Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso · 1937

A gaunt, blind old man in ragged blue clothes sits hunched cross-legged over a brown guitar against a blue background — Pablo Picasso, The Old Guitarist, 1903–04 — The Old Guitarist
Pablo Picasso · 1903–04

A blond woman with closed eyes sleeps in a red armchair, her head tilted back, beads at her neck, against green and red patterned walls — Pablo Picasso, Le Rêve, 1932 — Le Rêve (The Dream)
Pablo Picasso · 1932

A black ink drawing of a tall thin knight on a bony horse with a lance, a squat squire on a donkey, windmills and a spiky sun — Pablo Picasso, Don Quixote, 1955 — Don Quixote
Pablo Picasso · 1955

A large snarling striped cat with glaring eyes holds a struggling, wounded black bird in its jaws against a grey sky — Pablo Picasso, Cat Catching a Bird, 1939 — Cat Catching a Bird
Pablo Picasso · 1939

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