“The Lonesome Crouching Nude”
AI restores overpainted Picasso painting
Scientists have used artificial intelligence and 3D printing to restore Picasso’s overpainted painting “The Lonesome Crouching Nude”.
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Oxia Palus, UCL
The Spanish artist Pablo Picasso was born 140 years ago today. Some of his works are considered lost to this day – now a painting that Picasso himself painted over has been restored with the help of an AI.
“The Lonesome Crouching Nude” was thought to be lost for decades. That the painting had to exist was known from earlier records as well as other works by Pablo Picasso, in which he referred to the picture with the crouching woman. It was finally found ten years ago – among other paintings.
Artist painted over the painting himself
It was discovered when another Picasso work was examined in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York using X-rays and infrared rays, among other things. In the background of “The Blind Man’s Meal”, one of his masterpieces from the “Blue Period”, the image I was looking for came to light. The artist had apparently painted over it himself. Anthony Bourached, researcher at University College London, says: “We believe that Picasso probably was reluctant to paint over this work. This was common for his blue period works because they were early in his career and the materials were expensive.” The fact that it appears in the background of one of his most famous works of the blue period, La Vie, suggests that it “probably mattered” to Picasso, Bourached continued.
Picasso’s painting “The Blind Man’s Meal” (from left) and “La vie”, in which the reference to “The Lonesome Crouching Nude” was highlighted in red.
© Estate of Pablo Picasso / Oxia Palus, UCL
UCL scientists tried to restore the painted over painting – which they have now succeeded in doing. Using a combination of spectroscopic imaging, artificial intelligence and 3D printing, they re-painted the painting life-size and in color.
AI teaches itself Picasso’s painting style
This happened in several steps:
Initially, “The Blind Man’s Meal” was scanned in a variety of ways. In this way, the overpainted picture could be seen more clearly without affecting the original picture.
In order for the replica to come as close as possible to the original in appearance, feel and color, they then developed an AI algorithm that analyzed dozens of Picasso’s paintings and taught themselves the artist’s style.
Since a regular printer could not reproduce the three-dimensional brushstrokes of the original painting, the researchers used a 3D printer.
source: UCL