Picasso's Painting Les Demoiselles D'avignon

In 1907 Picasso drew The Demoiselles D'Avignon. This work was a complete breakthrough from everything that he had done before that time. It was the early stage of Cubism and a mixture of every other “ism”: Fauvism, Expressionism, Primitivism, Futurism and Modernism. (Sweetman 11-56) Followed by a series of large nude sketches leaning towards geometry, The Demoiselles was started in the spring of 1906 and was finished in the summer of the following year. However, Picasso never regarded it finished work and only allowed it to be exhibited in 1937 (Rubin 45-89). Altering the composition several times, he finally took out two main figures, a sailor and a student holding a skull, and replaced them with two nude women. (Fels 340-348)

The Demoiselles D'Avignon is undoubtedly advancement in 20th century art. The question however is where did Picasso get his inspiration and who influenced him? It was a summer in 1906 at Gosol, a little Spanish village, where its rough, primitive setting had led him to adopt a simplified style indicative of the sculptors of the Catalan Romanesque period (Sweetman 11-56). Picasso put into his work influences that had interested him for some time: Egyptian symmetry, ancient Greek sculpture, the Virgins of Catalan art, Cezanne's geometric planes and the rough expressionism of Negro statuettes (Rubin 45-89). Indeed, it wasn't just Picasso who was interested in the latter. Many expressionists were influenced by Negro art since they were attracted by its reduction in artificial art. (Daix 247-70)

Picasso was also influenced by Cezanne. He begun to cut up his figures into geometric shapes, cones, spheres, cylinders and in clearly defined planes just like Cezanne used to do. In the painting, Picasso over highlighted the cutting up of the shapes with brightly colored lines that remind tribal scars on the faces of some African tribesmen (Sweetman 11-56). Indeed, the figures' shapes in Picasso's painting show the influence of three major styles: on the left, the flattening of the woman's torso reminds Egyptian art; the noses of the two central figures are seen in profile whereas the rest of the facial characteristics are face on, something which reminds Iberian art and finally, the features of the woman in the right are reminiscent of masks of the Negro art. (Fels 340-348)

Common in most of The Demoiselles sketches is the general design of the picture inspired by Cezanne's bather compositions as well as by ...