Picasso’s “Demoiselles” may not be inspired by African art

The new scholarship suggests that a key painting by Pablo Picasso (a helping to stimulate modernism more widely) may have been inspired by the medieval church frescoes of the Spanish Pyrenees rather than African art, as many art historians have previously suggested.
The canvas in question, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), depicting five naked women, some of whom appear to have face masks. Using techniques derived from Cubism, Picasso broke the woman’s body and its background.
African art has long been Les Demoiselles d’AvignonIn June 1907, the museum of anthropology was painted after visiting the first Anthropology Museum in Paris, Ducati de Trocadre (De Delenagrage). “Black Art? I don’t know,” Picasso said in an interview in 1920.
Nowadays, French collector and self-proclaimed “art detective” Alain Moreau is in Announcement by Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts Arts Sant Jordi Claims that Picasso’s interaction with African art and artifacts began after he had completed it Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. this London Times First, the news of Moreau’s paper was reported.
Moreau believes that the work’s inspiration can be found in the murals found in the church of La Vella de Sant Cristòfol in Campdevànol, and in the stairs of Sant Martí De Fenollar in the French Pyrenees in southern Perpignan.
As part of his research, Moreau recovered the artist’s trip, including on his 1906 trip to Gósol, Spain. At that time, the paintings inside were attracted to the intellectual elite of Catalonia and had similar qualities Les Demoiselles d’Avignon For example, facial markers, corner forms and brightly colored palettes.
Moreau also pointed out that the African masks looked with it Les Demoiselles d’Avignon In a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1939, it was not until 1935 that the painting was completed for thirty years. But at the time, curator Alfred Barr claimed that the mask inspired the work directly.
Artists and historians have long debated the origins of inspiration Les Demoiselles d’Avignonsome people cited blatant black art theft, while others advocated their purposeful mysterious qualities.
Moreau still believes that the palette and the portrayal of female facial contours and eyes are more acutely recalling medieval church paintings in Catalonia. He also quoted Chirimbolomysterious traces on a person’s face are often interpreted as ears, tumors, or arms. The trademark draws inspiration from abstract facial markers found in Catalonian Christian art.