Today I visited Sena Picasso at Moderna Museet, where they exhibited his late works, the last decade before he died in 1973.
I did the guided tour. And afterwards, an elderly couple started talking to me about what we’d just seen. We ended up properly discussing it. What hit us, what confused us, what stayed. I love it when that happens with strangers.
What got me wasn’t the famous name. It was the nerve of it. Faces in the wrong place. Bodies that don’t follow any rules. Shapes that feel more honest than anything technically correct ever could. He wasn’t painting what he saw. He was painting what he felt.
He was in his eighties. Had outlived most of his generation. Already proven everything. And still showed up every day and painted. Fast, thick, urgent. For years, people dismissed it as unfinished. Now it’s considered ahead of its time.
I think about that a lot. Showing up anyway. Not caring if it’s neat.
I don’t plan my best work. It comes when I stop checking whether it looks right and just let my hand move. The shapes go where they go. If I try to control it too much, something dies in the process.
Picasso didn’t paint reality. He painted his version of it until the very end. Unapologetic.
I get that completely.
