Editing Pablo Picasso (section)

=== African art and primitivism: 1907–1909 ===
{{See also|Picasso's African Period|Proto-Cubism}}
[[File:Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.jpg|thumb|right|''[[Les Demoiselles d'Avignon]]'' (1907), [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York]]
Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with his painting ''[[Les Demoiselles d'Avignon]]''. The three figures on the left were inspired by [[Iberian sculpture]], but he repainted the faces of the two figures on the right after being powerfully impressed by African artefacts he saw in June 1907 in the ethnographic museum at [[Palais du Trocadéro]].<ref name="rube87"/> When he displayed the painting to acquaintances in his studio later that year, the nearly universal reaction was shock and revulsion; Matisse angrily dismissed the work as a hoax.<ref name="pbsor"/> Picasso did not exhibit ''Les Demoiselles'' publicly until 1916.

Other works from this period include ''Nude with Raised Arms'' (1907) and ''Three Women'' (1908). Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.<ref name="Watte207"/>
Analytic [[cubism]] (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with [[Georges Braque]] using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time share many similarities.<ref name="retro123"/>

In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the [[Montmartre]] and [[Montparnasse]] quarters, including [[André Breton]], poet [[Guillaume Apollinaire]], writer [[Alfred Jarry]] and [[Gertrude Stein]]. In 1911, Picasso was arrested and questioned about [[Mona Lisa#Refuge, theft, and vandalism|the theft of the ''Mona Lisa'']] from the [[Louvre]]. Suspicion for the crime had initially fallen upon Apollinaire due to his links to Géry Pieret, an artist with a history of thefts from the gallery. Apollinaire in turn implicated his close friend Picasso, who had also purchased stolen artworks from the artist in the past. Afraid of a conviction that could result in his deportation to Spain, Picasso denied having ever met Apollinaire. Both were later cleared of any involvement in the painting's disappearance.<ref name="thief"/><ref name="TIME - 08Apr2009 - Art's Great Whodunit: The Mona Lisa Theft of 1911"/>