Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, NewYork) dubbed by Pierre Daix as "the first painting in modern art" represents a milestone in the history of art. Picasso's radical break with tradition was to be a decisive influence on modern visual art. Only after this painting did Picasso, together with Braque, feel able to launch into the Cubist adve n t u re which literally splintered the visual realm; it was to change the face of painting forever by creating a new visual language and an original perspective on the world.

In the world of art, Cubism was nothing less than revolutionary, representing a paradigm shift in the way artists perceived the world, and incontestably one of the most influential movements in art history. To celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of Picasso's seminal work Les Demoiselles d'Avigon, leading Picasso scholars and art historians assess its legacy and the extraordinary influence of Picasso's Cubism on the development of twentieth-century art.

"The book is splendidly illustrated and the images alone make it valuable. Not only are there 400 color plates and a number of early photographs of the artist's studio, but the various chapters are preceded by more than a dozen full-page, enlarged details." ~Artblog.com