Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Date:
1907
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
8' x 7'8'' (243.9 x 233.7 cm)
Credit Line:
Museum of Modern Art, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest
Object number:
333.1939
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon marks a radical break from traditional composition and perspective in painting. It depicts five naked women composed of flat, splintered planes whose faces were inspired by Iberian sculpture and African masks. The compressed space they inhabit appears to project forward in jagged shards, while a slice of melon in the still life at the bottom of the composition teeters on an upturned tabletop. Picasso unveiled the monumental painting in his Paris studio after months of revision. The Avignon of the work’s title is a reference to a street in Barcelona famed for its brothels.
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