Les Demoiselles D’ Avignon the Portrait the Impact
Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon originally named The Brothel of Avignon is a large oil painting, consisting of five female prostitutes, situated in a Brothel located in Barcelona Spain. The portrait was painted in 1907 by world renowned artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Picasso made a radical departure from traditional European painting through the adaption of primitivism and the abandonment of perspective (Gibson, 1995). Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon was influential in the early development of cubism and modern art, however this work of art led to a widespread resentment and discord amongst the people closest to him (Gibson, 1995). My research intends to walk readers through Picasso’s life emphasizing how his work reshaped 20th Century Art, as well as, the influences coming from Primitive art during this period.
Picasso the man, a young inspiring artist arrived in Paris from Spain at the turn of the 20th century leaving family, friends and business contacts behind. By 1904 Picasso, determined to make a name for himself now fully settled in Paris, had gotten several studios off the ground, while building important relationships with friends and other artists (Daix,1988) Picasso’s groundbreaking recognition came between 1901 and 1904 for what’s known today as his blue period paintings. The blue period was a time of poverty and desperation based on what Picasso witnessed during the beginning of the 20th century in Spain and Paris his paintings reflected a time of blueness and despair (Daix, 1988).
Picasso himself admitted that he began to create paintings during the blue period as a result of the death of Spanish painter, Carlos Casagemas. Casagemas, not only a colleague but a good friend of Picasso’s, who committed suicide over an one-sided love for a women named Germaine Pichot. As irony would have it, Germaine was also one of the models featured in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon (Lomas, 1993). Paintings during...