e saw greatly influenced Picasso and his coworkers, such as Georges Braque, who founded the European avant-garde artistic movement of Cubism in the latter part of that year. Cubism was and still is the most influential movement in the history of modern art. The epoch came in three stages. The first stage, Analytic Cubism, was characterized by the simplification, distortion, and emphasis of the forms of objects. It consisted of facets, or cubes, arranged in superimposed, transparent planes with clearly defined edges that established mass, space, and the implication of movement. During this period, Picasso and Braque employed a palette of muted greens, greys, browns, and ochre. Many cubists were strongly influenced by the formal simplification and expressive power viewed in black African sculpture. The second phase of cubism was marked by the disappearance of the representation of objects and a slow phase-out of the separation of form and space. Synthetic Cubism was the third and final stage of the movement. Synthetic cubists wanted to improve reality with the creation of new tasteful objects. It is in this phase, where African influence is most apparent in Picasso’s work. His characters began to obtain oddly shaped faces, resembling those of African masks and sculpture. The colors in his palette changed to earth tones that were emblematic of African sculpture. Wild animals, which were typically found in the African range such as bulls and other horned creatures, also began surfacing in his work. His great curiosity with African sculpture was also directly seen in the representations of African characters conventionally made of wood and other materials.Picasso’s most famous painting, as well as the start of cubism, is considered by many to be Les Mademoiselles d’Avignon (The Women of Avignon). This extraordinary painting, fabricated by Picasso in 1907, includes many facets of African sculpture and art. The painting dep...
