Cubism

             me, for example, a collection of old drawings, to take .
             from them anything I like. He has been called a.
             master thief'. But what he takes he conforms into his.
             own pure ingeniousity (Lamplight 4).
             The ideas of Cézanne amazed Picasso in that the different shapes gave so many possibilities in representing different people and objects.
             Picasso was becoming very successful using the ideas of Impressionists. His style changed, for the better, when he took a painting holiday at Gosol in the Pyrenees. The pictures he worked on there and after his return to home showed two new important influences. One was that of the ancient Iberian bronze sculptures he had seen in Spain. The other was his recent discovery of African sculpture. He was attracted by its primitive power, bold distortions of nature, and deep sense of mystery (MacDonald 43).
             The African masks and sculptures suggested a new way of seeing the human form- from several sides at once, rather than from the fixed perspective of the traditional two dimensions. These visions combined with the geometric shapes and broke out into a revolutionary painting that shocked Picasso's critics, friends, and fellow artists alike.
             In 1907 Picasso began work on his breakthrough painting- a picture so large that he had to rent the high-ceilinged loft of his studio to undertake it. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Women of Avignon) has been called the first true twentieth century painting because of its revolutionary role in the history of art. There are five women depicted in the painting. The women on the left are not unlike traditional studies of the human form, even though strong distortions and geometrical structure give them a startling new look. But the figures on the right are a total break with the past. Their faces are angular and stylized, like those of the African masks. Most importantly, the body in the foreground is presented from several sides at once.