Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting
We could make this publication thanks to small donations. How is 3 minutos de arte supported?
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Pablo Picasso.
Oil on canvas. 243,9 x 233,7 cm.
MoMA. New York.
This painting starts to tell the history of Cubism in the 20th century. Perhaps, it would be necessary to go back to Cézanne, in the previous century, to understand this beginning better. We are, undoubtedly, before a key work of modern painting.
Picasso —an excellent drawer since he was a little child— abandons the imitation of nature in general, and especially of the human figure, and shows a different, primitive side of angular and brutal shapes.
He moves intentionally away from the notions of space and perspective. His great inspiration is Cézanne, justly considered “the father of modern art,” who in addition to breaking from perspective already geometrized and presented shapes in facets. He also moves away from other rules of pictorial tradition, although in this painting, paradoxically, addresses two of the classical themes of painting: nude and still life.
It is very important to highlight that Picasso did not revolutionize painting in one afternoon of brilliance. This work meant for the artist —considered by many as the most important of the first part of the 20th century— nine months of work and around 800 sketches and studies, or at least this is the number which has been found until today.
His famous phrase “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working” is not just a pretty phrase.
Recommended links:
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Mont Sainte-Victoire, Cézanne.
Picasso: “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
The Series of Picasso that Continues the Guernica.
Picasso and the Portraits of Marie-Thérèse.
You can also find more material using the search engine.
0 Comments