There’s a staggering number of paintings titled Woman With a Fan.

This adds accessorized bourgeoisie women to Cubism’s favorite subjects, alongside violins, vases, and newspapers.  However, the woman in this piece holds a special place in Metzinger’s heart. The figure seen here is probably Metzinger’s wife, Lucie Soubiron, who he married in 1909.

To achieve the trippy effects of this painting, Metzinger employed what he called “mobile perspective.”  Over an extended period of time, the painting would be executed at different angles and positions relative to the subject.  The end result: a painted collage of facets like that of a jewel. The picture is psychedelic upon first glance, as profile and frontal views are displayed all at once. He would leave the viewer to fill in the blanks and make sense of what he constructed.  Doesn’t it look like he melded the fan and the woman into one figure?

This was one of the first works in which Metzinger fully employed color, being preoccupied primarily with line, shape and form to construct his Cubist pieces.  Unlike Picasso and Braque’s later stages in Cubism, the Frenchman kept his work grounded in figurative subjects.

The first owner of Woman with a Fan, Herwarth Walden, was the founder of the Galerie der Sturm (and its associated magazine) in Berlin, and one of the biggest promoters of the abstract movements of the 20th century.  He has close ties to German Expressionism and was a avid supporter of Cubism, Orphism, and Dadaism, supporting them all through displaying the styles in his curated gallery.  Walden himself was no slouch: he was a poet and playwright, making three novels and eight plays.  Despite being a steadfast left-winger and Communist, he ironically died in a Stalinist prison at the age of 62, probably for something small like forgetting to salute or pissing off the wrong neighbor.