Study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Pablo Picasso, 1907

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About This Work

This small oil sketch on unstretched canvas is a preparatory study created by Pablo Picasso in early 1907 in Paris during the extensive conceptualization of his landmark painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Measuring 18.5 by 20.3 centimeters, the work depicts a provisional scene within the curtained interior of a brothel, featuring seven figures. Among these are five nude female figures alongside two potential male clients: a sailor positioned at the center and a medical student holding a skull on the left. Rendered with rapid brushwork and a restricted, earthy palette, the composition captures an intermediate stage where narrative elements from the artist's initial allegorical conception remain intact before being radically excised. The presence of the medical student introduces explicit memento mori symbolism linking sex and mortality. Ultimately, Picasso eliminated the male figures to intensify the confrontational directness of the female gaze, making this surviving study a crucial artifact of the painting's evolution.

During late 1906 and early 1907, Pablo Picasso produced hundreds of preparatory drawings, watercolors, and oil sketches as he wrestled with the monumental composition that would become Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. This foundational period marked his transition away from the sentimental lyricism of the Rose Period toward the radical geometric abstraction and African-influenced primitivism that defined proto-Cubism. Originally, Picasso conceived the scene as an explicit moral narrative concerning vice and death, drawing upon iconographic traditions that included the medical student with a skull. The subsequent abandonment of the male figures transformed the painting from a conventional moralizing tableau into an aggressive, psychological confrontation between viewer and subject. Acquired by The Museum of Modern Art in 1991 from the estate of art critic Maurice Raynal—who likely received it directly from the artist—this work provides invaluable documentation of the creative genesis underpinning 20th-century modernism.

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