Pablo Picasso
1881-1973
Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 19051906.
Pablo Picasso,
Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon,
June-July 1907.
(8 x 7.8 ft)
Picasso, Study for Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907.
Picasso, Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907.
Left: Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863.
Right: Picasso, Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907.
Picasso, Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 (detail)
Mask, Etoumbi region, People’s Republic of Congo. Wood, 14” high
Left: Mbuya (sickness) mask, Zaire. Painted wood, fiber, and cloth,
10.5” high.
Right: Picasso, Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 (detail)
Cubism: 1908-1912
“I do not read English, an English book is a blank
book to me. This does not mean that the English
language does not exist, and why should I blame
anybody else but myself if I cannot understand what
I know nothing about?”
— Pablo Picasso, 1923
Picasso, Ma Jolie, winter 1911-12
Paul Cézanne, Quartier Four, Auvers-surOise, ca. 1873.
Left: Cézanne, Quartier Four, Auvers-sur-Oise, ca.
1873.
Right: Picasso, Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro,
summer 1909.
Left: Paul Cézanne, Gardanne,
1885-86.
Right: Picasso, Ma Jolie, winter
1911-12.
“Years of research proved that closed form did not
permit an expression sufficient for the two artists’
aims. Closed form accepts objects as contained by
their own surfaces, viz. the skin; it then endeavors
to represent this closed body, and, since no object
is visible without light, to paint this ‘skin’ as the
contact point between the body and light where
both merge into color.”
— Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1920
Picasso, Portrait of Ambroise Vollard,
1909-1910.
“At the same time Braque
made an important
discovery. In one of his
pictures he painted a
completely naturalistic nail
casting its shadow on the
wall.”
—Daniel-Henry
Kahnweiler, 1920
Left: Georges Braque, Violin and Palette, [autumn] 1909.
Right: Georges Braque, Pitcher and Violin, 1909-1910 (or early 1910).
Left: Pablo Picasso, Ma Jolie, 1911-12.
Right: Georges Braque, The Portugais, [autumn-winter] 1911-12.