Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Picasso worked on preliminary sketches and studies for Les Demoiselles for months in 1906–1907. The title (given not by Picasso but later by his friend André Salmon) refers to a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avignon Street) in Barcelona. When Picasso showed the finished canvas to friends including Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Kees van Dongen, the reaction was shock — even hostility. Braque said it made him feel as if someone had 'drunk gasoline to spit fire.'

Picasso rolled the canvas up and did not exhibit it for nearly nine years. It was first shown publicly in 1916 and entered MoMA's collection in 1939, purchased from the collection of Jacques Doucet. By then, its position as the founding work of Cubism and the beginning of modern art was firmly established.