Pablo Picasso

1881-1973

Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1905-1906.

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

Picasso, Ma Jolie, winter 1911-12

“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

Paul Cézanne, Quartier Four, Auvers-sur-Oise, 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.

Picasso, Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1909-1910.

“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

Left: Georges Braque, Violin and Palette, [autumn] 1909.Right: Georges Braque, Pitcher and Violin, 1909-1910 (or early 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: Pablo Picasso, Ma Jolie, 1911-12.Right: Georges Braque, The Portugais, [autumn-winter] 1911-12.