Art Two - Picasso's Guernica and Women of Avignon

Below are two of Pablo Picasso's most famous paintings.  Thoughts?

Women of Avignon (1907) 96x92"

This large oil painting was created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on a street in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none is conventionally feminine. The women appear slightly menacing and are rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. The three figures on the left exhibit facial features in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the right are shown with African mask-like features. The racial primitivism evoked in these masks, according to Picasso, moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force."

In this adaptation of primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. This proto-cubist work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both cubism and modern art.

Guernica (1937) 137x305"

This is a very large oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso completed in June 1937. Now in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the gray, black, and white painting was done at Picasso's home in Paris. It is regarded by many art critics as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history, and is one of Picasso's best known works.

Standing at 11 ft 5 in tall and 25 ft 6 in wide, the painting shows the suffering of people and animals wrenched by violence and chaos. Prominent in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, screaming women, dismemberment, and flames.

The painting was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, Guernica was exhibited at the Spanish display at the 1937 Paris International Exposition and then at other venues around the world. The touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief. The painting became famous and widely acclaimed, and it helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War.