Dryad

Created in1908, the "Dryad" is regarded as one of the most important works among early Cubist paintings by Pablo Picasso. In the Sergey Shchukin collection it was named “Nude Woman in a Landscape”. The world of dryads lacks sunshine that brings joy, it is somber, mysterious and open to the dark and irrational. The tightly interlocked tree trunks appear to thrust to the foreground their humanlike creation. The dryad’s figure is vulgar and aggressive. Her polygonal silhouette includes geometric surfaces – the planes of light brown, brownish-grey and deep brown tones. The joints of these planes are delineated by clear-cut lines. This artistic device of treating a human body differently has helped Picasso not only to show its constitution, but also to discover its potential energy and dynamic forces of adhesion and thrust. This explains the active and dynamic nature of portrayed characters. "In fact, the best paintings are akin to literary texts, they tell a story" (Picasso). Picasso did enjoy “narrating”, yet his narration never lacked imaginativeness, it was an embodiment of the artist’s intense and unquiet thoughts about the complex and contradictory world, and about the complex and contradictory nature of man.