Modern art his career and in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism. Initially influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and other late-19th-century innovators, Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With the painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907), Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive
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