MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, Les Demoiselles D'avignon By Picasso

Completed in 1907 after dozens and dozens of drawings, sketches, studies of the group and of the individual figures, the large painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was Picasso’s first major masterpiece. This key work marked the end of the age of traditional painting, definitively ushering in the age of modern art. The Spanish painter, who was twenty-six at the time, presents a harsh, angular vision of the women, accentuating the deconstruction of the human figures and objects and giving rise to the expressive Cubist revolution.

Picasso lived and worked in his home in Paris, on the hill of Montmartre, and in the preceding years had already gone through “blue” and “rose” periods, so-called for the color predominantly used in his paintings.

A series of events shaped the shift in style of the young painter: the influence of the archaeological and African sculptures found in the museums and galleries in Paris, the friendship-rivalry with Matisse and the visit to a major retrospective on Cézanne, who had just died and had not been widely known during his lifetime....