Cubism, whose maximum exponent was Pablo Picasso, shows a fragmented version of reality, geometric and primitive, reducing to the minimum the details to give in a same plane, several points of view of the same subject.
The classic Renaissance rules of perspective no longer exist, but the decomposition of space reigns; there is no longer a concern for detail; the color palette loses in brightness and is filled with brown, gray and beige tones; paper of newspaper and other objects is glued giving light to the technique of the collage; the subjects of predilection are the portraits, the objects and the urban dead scenes.
"Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" is a good example to illustrate and understand the keys of Cubism. It is a group of five prostitute women from Avinyó street in Barcelona -in the Gothic district-, represented among the curtains of a brothel. Some seem to have an African mask instead of a sweet face, because Picasso and the other artists of the twentieth century were passionate about primitivism. The bodies do not have classic feminine and Greek forms, but more a masculine aspect, heavy and geometric. There is no spatial reference, the profiles and facials are mixed and only the color allows to be placed.
What prevails is the geometric volume and color, patterns that gave light to all the other artistic movements of the twentieth century: futurism, Russian constructivism and abstraction, among others.
