The Accordionist The Accordionist The Accordionist is a 1911 painting by Pablo Picasso. As stated by the title, the painting is meant to portray a man playing an accordion. The division of three-dimensional forms into a two-dimensional plane indicate that the painting is in the style of analytic cubism, which was developed by Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907 and 1914. The onset of cubism is possibly due to Picasso and Braque rebelling against centuries of traditional, realistic art that imitates the natural world. In earlier stages of analytic cubism, such as Picasso's "Carafe, Jug and Fruit Bowl", Picasso begins to break
20th-century Western painting syndrome; this creates an aesthetic traffic jam with no firm and clear direction and with every lane on the artistic superhighway filled to capacity. 20th-century Western painting 20th-century Western painting begins with the heritage of late-19th-century painters Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others who were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure