This work by Pablo Picasso is a pivotal early Cubist painting. Painted in a Spanish fishing village, the work was first thought to depict a man rowing, but it is more likely a study of a seated woman.

With Cubism, Picasso and fellow artist Georges Braque broke down the components of the picture plane. Rejecting the representation of three-dimensional forms through traditional one-point perspective, they instead represented their subjects through a system of flat signs.

The Rower belongs to the period of Analytic Cubism, as seen in the painting's limited palette of brown, gray, and black, and its nearly unrecognizable subject. The figure—defined by complex horizontal layering—emerges from an undefined background. The oval head, rectangular neck, and sharp angles of elbows are identifiable, even as the arrangement of shapes suggests abstract volumes in space.