Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon) is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avignon Street) in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none is conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Three figures on the left exhibit facial features in the Iberian style
Guernica (Picasso) of preliminary studies, the so-called primary project, that show an atelier installation incorporating the central triangular shape which reappears in the final version of "Guernica", Becht-Jördens and Wehmeier interpret the painting as a self-referential composition in the tradition of atelier paintings such as "Las Meninas" by Diego Velázquez. In his "chef d'oeuvre", Picasso seems to be trying to define his role and his power as an artist in the face of political power and violence. But far from being a mere political painting, "Guernica" should be seen as Picasso's comment on what art can actually contribute towards the self-assertion that