Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon) was a 1907 cubist painting by Picasso.[1] It represents five women in a brothel.[1] It took him nine months to paint it.[2] Picasso gave up all attempts at traditional painting in this early cubist painting.[2] He distorted the female figures in a way that showed the influence of African art.[2] When the 8 square feet (0.74 m2) painting was shown in his studio to a group of painters and critics, they were outraged.[1] Henri Matisse called it a hoax and an attempt to paint the fourth dimension,[1] The art critic André Salmon wrote: "It was the ugliness of the faces that froze with horror the half-converted".[1] Another painter, André Derain, wrote: "One day we shall find Pablo has hanged himself behind his great canvas".[1] It has been called one of the most significant paintings of the 20th century.[3] The two figures on the right are shown with African mask-like features, an interest of Picasso at the time.[4]
References
change- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907". Culture Shock. PBS. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 by Pablo Picasso". PabloPicasso.org. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
- ↑ Camille Paglia 2012. Glittering Images: a journey through art from Egypt to Star Wars New York: Pantheon, p. 103.
- ↑ Gina M. Rossetti 2006. Imagining the primitive in naturalist and modernist literature. University of Missouri Press. ISBN 0826265030