Picasso’s African (Primitivism) Period 1906-1909
By the beginning of 1906, Picasso puts aside his harlequins (after painting the picture Le Mort d’Arlequin in 1905 and starts to make sketches in preparation for his painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
Picasso started to become very interested in human nude form, painting them again and again and turning them into sculptural and simplified forms. His work was also further influenced by his visit to an exhibition of ancient Iberian sculpture at the Louvre. His portraits and paintings of this period portrayed the human form in a non-naturalistic way, seeing them in terms of their volume, simplifying and stripping it down to essentials and ignoring their perspective and proportions to each other. Picasso was also interested in African wooden masks, it was suggested that this may be due to him being able to identify their exorcism element in regards to the death of his sister Conchita.
Picasso’s African-inspired period resulted in the large painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. As the title suggests, the painting is about a brothel (as Avignon was a street in Barcelona that was famous for its brothel). The painting depicts five different nude female figures representing prostitutes. Initially this picture was to be a narrative brothel scene with five prostitutes and two men – one a patron surrounded by the women and a medical student holding a skull, in the end Picasso painted out the two men and have the five prostitutes looking out at the viewer. The prostitute on the right holds back the curtains to reveal the other four prostitutes coming from or with white cloths. There is a table in the foreground with fruit on – suggesting that this show is for the viewer sitting at the table. The bodies are angular, yet suggest the female form with some smooth curves. The two women in the centre have faces that suggest Iberian masks, the other three have African mask like faces. As the canvass was around eight foot square, the whole effect is very menacing as the mask-like faces on the right are hideous. The colours used for this painting range from off-white to brown, with areas of blue in the middle. On closer inspection, the canvas is split in two down the middle by the female nude with both arms outstretched and the table in the front. In this painting, Picasso seems to portray different ideas of beauty by contrasting the hideous faces on the right to the two in the centre. By comparison the two central female nudes are more aesthetically pleasing. The two central figures also make use of cloths and drapes – a classical prop to show off the enticement of the female nude. Picasso may have modelled the middle figure on the famous Venus de Milo. Picasso describes this painting as his first “exorcism” painting. This painting shocked Picasso’s friends when it was unveiled, and even those who were sexually experimental declared Picasso insane. With Les Demoiselles d’Avignon Picasso felt what it was like to be an innovative genius – on the one hand knowing he had managed to reach his goal, on the other being abandoned by his friends. Picasso had learnt from this period on to hide his more innovative pieces.
Other works from this period include: Autoportrait a la palette and Portrait de Gertrude Stein.
Autoportrait a la palette
Around this time, Picasso had also formed a little band of friends around himself, these were known as La Bande a Picasso. The members of this circle included Guillaume Apollinaire, Andre Salmon and Max Jacob – all three were poets.
