Carrer d'Avinyó — Picasso's Dangerous Street
Carrer d'Avinyó in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter inspired Pablo Picasso's revolutionary masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which launched Cubism. At number 44 stood Madame Mercé's brothel, frequented by a teenage Picasso after moving to Barcelona in 1895. In 1906, Picasso spent nine months painting five women based on his memories of this street. Poet André Salmon renamed the artwork in 1916, leading many to confuse the street with Avignon, France.
Barcelona · from the walk “Stones & Secrets: Hidden Courtyards of the Barri Gòtic” · audio ~3 min · Generated
Carrer d'Avinyó, Barcelona
- Pablo Picasso moved to Barcelona in 1895 at age thirteen and shared a studio on Carrer de la Plata.
- Madame Mercé operated a popular brothel at number 44 Carrer d'Avinyó during the late nineteenth century.
- Picasso spent nine months in 1906 creating hundreds of preparatory drawings depicting five women for his painting.
- Poet André Salmon renamed Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon during its first public exhibition in 1916.
Which Barcelona street inspired Pablo Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon?
Take a good look at this narrow medieval street. Carrer d'Avinyó. It looks quiet now... boutiques, tapas bars, young people sipping wine. But in the late eighteen hundreds, this was one of barcelOna's most notorious streets. And right here, at number forty-four, behind a heavy wooden door, stood the brothel of Madame Mercé... one of the most flourishing in the entire city.......... A teenage boy used to walk these very cobblestones. His name was Pablo Ruiz... though soon enough, barcelOna would teach him to go by his mother's surname instead. Picasso. He arrived in this city in eighteen ninety-five, just thirteen years old. His father rented him a studio nearby on Carrer de la Plata, which he shared with his friend Manuel Pallarés. And it was Pallarés, according to accounts, who first introduced the precocious young artist to the brothels of this quarter.......... Picasso didn't just visit once. He reportedly came here week after week, year after year, claiming he truly got to Know the women intimately. And those memories... they followed him to Paris.......... In nineteen oh six, now twenty-five years old and working in his cramped studio at the bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, Picasso began obsessively sketching... hundreds of preparatory drawings... for a painting that would take nine months to complete. He originally included two male figures, a sailor and a medical student holding a skull. But he stripped them away, leaving Only the five women... staring directly at You, the viewer, with angular, fractured bodies and faces borrowed from ancient ibErian sculpture and African masks.......... He called it "Le Bordel d'Avinyón"... My Brothel. But when it was finally shown publicly in nineteen sixteen, the poet André Salmon quietly changed the title to the more polite "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," the Young Ladies of Avinyón. Picasso Hated that title. He would have preferred simply "Las chicas de Avignon"... The Girls.......... And here's what most people get wrong. They hear "Avignon" and think of the French city, with its famous bridge and papal palace. But no... it was always This street. This narrow lane in barcelOna's Gothic Quarter. The painting that shattered five hundred years of European artistic tradition, that launched Cubism, that made Matisse furious and left Braque speechless... was born from memories of number forty-four, Carrer d'Avinyó. The door is still there. Take a look.