Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - Pablo Picasso

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (in French), painted by Pablo Picasso in 1907, is a fundamental work of modern art that marked the beginning of Cubism. This painting reflects the great influence that African art and its celebratory masks or rituals had on Picasso, who studied them intensely to incorporate them into his work. The representation of the five female figures with angular faces and disruptive geometric forms demonstrates this influence and breaks with Western artistic traditions. The work belongs to the Cubist movement, characterized by the fragmentation of objects and the simultaneous representation of multiple perspectives.

This masterpiece by Picasso not only challenges aesthetic conventions but also proposes a new way of understanding and representing visual reality, deeply influencing the development of Cubism and the evolution of other subsequent artistic movements such as Futurism and Expressionism. Painters like Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger were influenced by this work and its exploration of form and perspective. The artist's innovation with this painting opened new possibilities for abstraction and the reinterpretation of space in 20th-century art.