Picasso created several busts and heads of Marie-Thérèse Walter in the early 1930s in his studio at Boisegeloup. He was experimenting with exaggeration and abstraction of the human form at this time, and often fused her nose with her forehead in a prominent protrusion that dominates the face, both in painting and sculpture of this period. Over the years, many art historians have interpreted it as a phallic form that represents Picasso’s lust for his young lover. Deborah Wye, Senior Curator at the Museum of Modern Art, has also noted that it resembles the facial features of many of the African fertility masks that were in Picasso’s collection installed at Boisgeloup.