Les Demoiselles dAvignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, originally titled The Brothel of Avignon is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.


Part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer dAvinyó, a street in Barcelona, Spain. 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 far left figure exhibits facial features and dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. The two adjacent figures are shown in the Iberian style of Picassos native Spain, while the two on the right are shown with African mask-like features. The ethnic primitivism evoked in these masks, according to Picasso, moved him to liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force.