“The elemental conflict or psychodrama…that of man confronting woman, self-confronting other, the power of the look, and the play of desire...Picasso, in effect, makes us voyeurs of voyeurism. It is the scopic drive, the gazing impulse, the desire to possess through the look that we witness, and by implication, that we engage in as well. In this sense, the male voyeurs that Picasso depicts also mirror the artist, whose controlling gaze staged this recurring spectacle in the first place.” (Karen Kleinfelder, The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze, Picasso's Pursuit of the Model, Chicago, 1993, pp. 186-187).

Femme Nue et Guerrier, executed in 1969 when Picasso was nearly ninety, embodies the raw intensity and unrestrained energy of his late style. Executed on 30 April 1969, this is number one of seven drawings Picasso made on the same day. The ink drawing presents a scene of licentious, voyeuristic contemplation. Two figures dominate the composition: a voluptuous reclining nude, sketched with fluid, confident lines, and a sombre, armoured warrior rendered in profile, observing her from the right-hand corner. The stark juxtaposition of these figures showcases Picasso's mastery of tension, contrasting the sensual with the stoic, and the expressive with the restrained.

Following major surgery in 1965, Picasso's reclusive life at the villa Notre-Dame-de-Vie in Mougins with Jacqueline Roque, his muse and companion whom he married in 1961, fuelled a shift in his art. Jacqueline, forty-six years his junior, became a persistent subject and source of inspiration during his final decade. In Femme Nue et Guerrier, however, the male figure's presence suggests an inner dialogue rather than mere observation. The interplay between the two figures can be seen as a meditation on mortality, reflecting the tension between desire and the inevitability of decline.

As he neared the end of his life, Picasso’s creative output surged with a renewed focus on erotic and existential themes. Femme Nue et Guerrier exemplifies this preoccupation, using the nude figure as both a celebration and deconstruction of female beauty. Drawing upon the tradition of the odalisque, Picasso evokes the languid sensuality found in works by Henri Matisse and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres yet diverges sharply from idealisation. The woman's contours are defined by sweeping, vigorous strokes that capture a sense of flesh that is tactile and elusive. Her pose – simultaneously relaxed and provocative – suggests a state of blissful abandon, while the unrefined quality of the lines imbues the figure with a raw, primal humanity, embodying the essence of l’éternel féminin.

This treatment contrasts starkly with the airbrushed perfectionism of the Pop Art movement, which flourished in the 1960s. While artists like Tom Wesselmann and Roy Lichtenstein portrayed the female body as polished and commodified, Picasso's figures remain unfiltered, confrontational, and intensely personal depictions of his inner world. Rather than sanitising or idealising the nude, Picasso's line work exudes an earthy eroticism that verges on the grotesque, portraying the female form as an embodiment of primal life force.

The figure of the warrior adds a complex layer to the composition. The helmeted warrior, or guerrier, had appeared in Picasso’s works since the 1930s, notably in Head of a Warrior (1931) and Guernica (1937), where the figure symbolised the futility of war. In the present drawing, the warrior is divested of any heroic qualities, his expression melancholic and downcast, representing Picasso’s own sense of diminishing vitality in old age. Defined by angular, abbreviated strokes, the warrior's figure contrasts sharply with the fluidity of the nude. His distant gaze suggests longing or despair, an archetypal alter ego for Picasso himself. This caricatured motif reflects the artist’s fascination with chivalric imagery and a growing sense of nostalgia and introspection that marked his later years.

Picasso’s various archetypes fused his personal history and psychological state with the cultural legacy of Western art, drawing upon the iconography of Old Master painters such as Rembrandt and Diego Velázquez. The deliberate alignment of himself with the heroic figures of art history becomes evident: “Whether they come from Rembrandt, from Velázquez, from Shakespeare, from Piero Crommelynck's goatee beard, or from that of Picasso's father, all these musketeers are men in disguise, romantic lovers, soldiers who are arrogant, virile, vain, and ultimately absurd, for all their panache. Costumed, armed, helmeted, man is always seen in action; and the musketeer sometimes takes up a brush and becomes the painter” (Marie-Laure Bernadac, Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model, in Late Picasso (exhibition catalogue), The Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 81).

In Femme Nue et Guerrier, Picasso’s command of the drawn line is on full display. His technique merges the expressive freedom of gestural abstraction with the formal discipline of classical draughtsmanship. By this stage in his career, Picasso had refined his approach to a kind of visual shorthand – his lines simultaneously suggest volume and movement while omitting unnecessary details. This stylistic economy not only captures the immediacy of his vision but also intensifies the emotional impact of the figures. The strategic foreshortening and placement of limbs direct the viewer's gaze towards the vulva, the visual and symbolic focal point of the composition, amplifying the unabashed eroticism that characterises this period.

Ultimately, Femme Nue et Guerrier stands as a testament to Picasso’s enduring engagement with the themes of love and death. In these final years, the artist continued to push the boundaries of representation, fusing classical influences with a modern sensibility to create works that resonate with a timeless vitality. The drawing not only reflects the artist’s introspective dialogue with his own history but also offers an unflinching exploration of the elemental forces that drive human experience.