Demoiselle of Avignon

Demoiselle of Avignon

            Demoiselle of Avignon is an artwork showing five nude women from a brothel along Carrer d’Avinyo. Picasso depicts the female figures not feminine since they have an angular, disjointing body shapes; each is seven feet tall, and menacing appearances. All five females have pixelated heads. However, three of the female figures on the right have an Iberian appearance while the two characters on the left are faces with African masks features which challenge and shock the viewer. The facial masks represent a racial primitivism which unleashes an original, captivating artistic style. The figures have a flattened body appearance with the body parts, especially the arms and legs, torso, and feet which create a two-dimensional abstract design. The painting has patterns of dark and light which create form and space.

Compared to great artists like David, Metisse, and Young Menet, Picasso is quite competitive, creative, and well organized in his art. For instance, compared to Matisse’s Bonheur de Vivre, where his painting is in a mythic Greece golden age style, and the figure are uncrowded, and in a three-dimension abstract. Picasso with the intent of outdoing Metissa, he uses sharp, almost shuttered figures with deeper tone fit for an urban interior lighting. The painting depicts the 20th-century art.