Cubism1907
The Young Ladies of Avignon
Pablo Picasso
Curator's Eye
"The brutal confrontation between the Iberian faces of the three women on the left and the terrifying African masks of the two figures on the right."
The birth certificate of modern art, this masterpiece shatters five centuries of pictorial tradition by deconstructing the female body through the prism of early Cubism.
Analysis
Painted in 1907 at the Bateau-Lavoir, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" does not depict high-society ladies, but prostitutes from a brothel on Avinyó Street in Barcelona. Picasso, aged 25, delivered a work of total rupture that horrified his contemporaries, including Matisse and Braque. The historical context is that of Paris in the midst of colonial fervor, where the discovery of "primitive" arts from Africa and Oceania challenged Western aesthetic certainties. Picasso used this alterity to pulverize academic beauty.
The mythological analysis of the work lies in its dimension of exorcism. Picasso was not painting a scene of pleasure, but a confrontation with the fear of sex, disease (syphilis), and death. The figures on the right, their faces replaced by masks, embody a form of savage sacredness, a magical protection against the forces of fate. The psychology of the work is marked by unprecedented visual aggression: the viewer is no longer a passive voyeur but the prey of these fixed, asymmetrical gazes that defy them from within the canvas.
Technically, Picasso abandoned chiaroscuro and linear perspective. Bodies are fragmented into angular facets, reminiscent of direct carving in wood sculpture. The palette is reduced to ochre tones, pinks, and cold blues, creating a space without real depth, where background and figures interlock in a geometric struggle. The artist refused traditional "finish," leaving areas of paint almost raw to emphasize the creative force of the gesture rather than the perfection of imitation.
Finally, the work explores the relationship between time and space. By showing the crouching figure at the bottom right from two simultaneous angles (back and profile face), Picasso introduced the fourth dimension into painting. This is a conceptual revolution: the image is no longer the capture of a snapshot, but a synthesis of the artist's knowledge of the object. This deconstruction of reality announced Analytical Cubism and changed the trajectory of global art history forever.
One of the most fascinating secrets revealed by preparatory studies is that Picasso initially included two men in the composition: a medical student holding a skull (a memento mori symbol) and a sailor. By removing them, Picasso transformed the meaning of the work, placing the spectator directly in the position of the brothel client, reinforcing the frontal psychological impact. X-ray analyses also showed that the face of the woman on the far left was originally much softer, inspired by ancient Iberian sculpture.
A famous anecdote tells that when Picasso first showed the canvas to his friends, the reaction was a deathly silence followed by total rejection. The work remained rolled up in his studio for nearly nine years before being exhibited publicly. It was only with time that people understood that these "masks" were not mere stylistic borrowings from African art, but an attempt to rediscover the ritual and magical function of painting, far from bourgeois ornamentation.
Finally, recent pigment analyses have highlighted Picasso's use of industrial paints, deliberately seeking to break the nobility of classical oil painting. The brutality of the stroke, often compared to axe blows, testifies to the creative violence necessary to give birth to modernity. The painting, now an icon of the MoMA, almost did not survive the misunderstanding of its era.
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