Les Demoiselles d’Avignon – Picasso «invente» le cubisme

Cubism is considered the first true aesthetic break with the representation of reality. Dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler locates its origins in 1907 with the famous canvas Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

After visiting an exhibition of African tribal objects at the Trocadéro museum, Picasso completely reworked the right portion of the painting.

The term 'Cubist' comes from a reflection by Matisse before a painting by Braque entitled Houses at L'Estaque, dating from the same year 1907.

• The collaboration between Braque and Picasso lasted a few years in a very close manner. • They did not sign certain paintings so that the work could not be attributed to one or the other. • Picasso, reluctant to engage in public relations, unscrupulously claims paternity of Cubism.

The true origin of Cubism goes back to Cézanne, not Picasso. A letter from Cézanne to Émile Bernard in 1904 provides its conceptual key.

Cézanne recommends treating nature through the cylinder, sphere, and cone, putting everything in perspective so that each side of an object or plane is directed toward a central point.

Cézanne relentlessly pursues a fusion of space and object, creating a pictorial field that is no longer a simple imitation of reality.

• Braque recognizes well before Picasso what he owes to the master of Aix-en-Provence. • Les Demoiselles d'Avignon seem to have overwhelmed Braque with their audacity and proximity to his own research.

By making two abstract spaces coexist in Les Demoiselles, Picasso deals a fatal blow to the principle of unity of academic space.

Braque and Picasso together destroy space in perspective and limit the point of view to find a space revealing the truth of the object.

This common search imposes a new conceptualized vision, later named Analytic Cubism, which transforms the logic of painting.

The abolition of classical space plunges Cubism toward abstraction, which dissatisfies Braque and Picasso.

• Artists incorporate letters, often stenciled. • They integrate foreign elements such as collages. • Use of materials like a piece of oilcloth in the famous Still Life with Caned Chair.

Space and color become autonomous. The object is no longer presented in order, but must be mentally recomposed by the viewer.

This phase authorizes a figurative freedom never achieved before, marking the beginning of Synthetic Cubism.

Cubism illustrates Einstein's theory of relativity, which questioned the uniqueness of Euclidean space and gave painting a transformed function.

Cubism did not completely break with reality and did not produce a total rupture with figuration.

• Cubism paved the way for abstraction. • It prepared the ground for conceptual art. • It freed vision from pure observation.

If the reality of vision was the obsession of realism in the nineteenth century, Cubism of the early twentieth century focuses on the mental experience of the artist facing the world.

By inheriting Cézanne's research, Cubism opened the way to all modern painting and can be considered the most decisive movement in contemporary art.