Mother and Child (First Steps), 1943
Oil on canvas, 51 1/4 x 38 1/4 in. (130.2 x 97.1 cm)
Gift of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903
1958.27
©2004 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Commonly known as First Steps, this painting depicts a child’s struggle to assert his independence and to walk for the first time. Picasso re-creates this important moment through an adaptation of the pictorial language of Cubism (a revolutionary mode of abstraction that he developed around 1908–12 with fellow French painter Georges Braque), informed by the monumentalizing approach to the figure that stemmed from Picasso’s interest in classicism between the wars. The distortions of the child’s body—the arm sprouting from his chin, the sharp angles of his torso—express his awkward and strenuous effort to move forward. Picasso executed the painting during the German occupation of Paris; an important work from the wartime years, the painting was prominently displayed after the city’s liberation at the Salon de la Libération in 1944.
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