Picasso and Africa

Picasso and Matisse were friends. One day Matisse bought an African Mask and showed it to Picasso. They both were amazed by the way the mask depicted the face.

Picasso went to the museum in Paris and looked at all the African Masks on display there.

Picasso went to the museum in Paris and looked at all the African Masks on display there.

Soon Picasso was painting people who looked like they were wearing African masks. Head of Man, 1907

How are these the same?How are they different?

What parts of the face are exaggerated?

Head of a Woman, 1907

He even painted his good friend Gertrude like a mask!

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906

I think he made my nose too

big!

Then Picasso thought if he exaggerated the faces, why not show parts of the figure from all different sides at once?

EyesMouth

Soon Picasso had so many sides at once, that it was getting hard to tell what the painting originally was about.

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard. 1910

Really hard!

Picasso called this way of breaking his painting into little cubes:

Cubism Portrait of Kahnweiler. 1910