Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon in English) is a celebrated painting by Pablo Picasso that depicts five prostitute in a brothel. Picasso painted it in France, and completed it in the summer of 1907. The eye-catching painting is one of Picasso's most famous. It now belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City which acquired it in 1939. Picasso created over one hundred sketches and studies in preparation for this work, one of the most important in the early development of Cubism. Within the narrative of early modern art, it is widely held as a seminal work. It has been argued that the painting was a reaction to Henri Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre and Blue Nude.Its resemblance to Cezanne's Les Grandes Baigneuses and El Greco's Opening of the Fifth Seal was discussed by later commentators. At the time of its first exhibition in 1916, the painting was deemed immoral. André Salmon gave it its current name; Picasso had always called it Le Bordel. Picasso... full article at wikipedia