Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

(noun)

(The Young Ladies of Avignon) is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The work portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street) in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting and confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear slightly menacing and are rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Two are shown with African mask-like faces and three more with faces in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, giving them a savage aura. In this adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. The work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both Cubism and Modern Art.

Related Terms

Examples of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in the following topics:

  • Space

    • Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is an example of cubist art, which has a tendency to flatten the picture plane, and its use of abstract shapes and irregular forms suggest multiple points of view within a single image.

  • Effects of Colonialism on Nigerian Art

    • Picasso's exposure to African art influenced the style of his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (begun in May 1907 and reworked in July of that year), especially in the treatment of the two figures on the right side of the composition.
    • Although Les Demoiselles is seen as a proto-cubist work, Picasso continued to develop a style derived from African art before beginning the analytic cubism phase of his painting in 1910.
    • Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

  • Picasso

    • Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
    • Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with the two figures on the right in his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which were inspired by African artifacts.

  • Contemporary Art

  • Primitivism and Cubism

    • Gauguin's powerful posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and 1906 had a powerful influence on Picasso's paintings .
    • African art influenced Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), especially in its treatment of the two figures on the right side of the composition .

  • Contemporary African Art

    • This period was critical to the evolution of Western modernism in visual arts, symbolized by Picasso's breakthrough painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon".
    • Groud (born 1956) is a painter, illustrator and author from Toulépleu, Côte d'Ivoire.
    • Groud is active against the military use of children in his homeland Côte d'Ivoire and the world in general.
    • Groud is active against the military use of children in his homeland Côte d'Ivoire.

  • The Rise of Modernism