The Women of Algiers is a famous painting by Eugene Delacroix, which Picasso decided to cover in his reworking series. As someone who had studied classical art, and produced much of it himself in his early days, it is intriguing to study this series of works from Picasso. During the turn of the year of 1954-55, Picasso developed a sudden obsession for this famous painting and produced 13 oil paintings based on it. He would experiment with style and also cropped elements from the work. The artist added great flair to his own version, and would typically take these famous classic paintings into new ground rather than just repeating what had already been achieved by these great masters.
He did the same with Edouard Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass, Diego Velazquez's Las Meninas and Jocques-Louis David's The Rape of the Sabine Women. The Women of Algiers, the version pictured here, reached a record sale price at auction in 2015, something achieved several times by original Picasso paintings.
