Les Demoiselles d'', Avignon by Jeroen Quirijns

For me, this painting was perhaps just as significant as it was for Picasso back then… Picasso’s first ‘ "moderne" ’ work; incidentally, it remained standing with the image facing the wall for a long time. Apart from Matisse, who laughed at it and made it look ridiculous, the painting received little attention, but it has an interesting story behind it.
Picasso, who from that point onwards continued to produce ‘ "realistische" ’ paintings – the Rose and Blue Periods and the like – found himself compelled, after 825 sketches on a particular subject, to take a completely different approach, following a visit to a museum to view African sculptures. The subject of the painting was, to put it bluntly, prostitutes in a brothel.
Picasso, the son of an academic art teacher – and thus influenced and shaped by his father – thus breaks away from his father’s ideology of painting from life; call it a ‘ "vadermoord" ’. The painting depicts five female figures and, perhaps most importantly, the fruit basket. This fruit basket is a reference to Zeuxis, the founder of illusionist painting – or, in other words, his father!
Zeuxis was commissioned to paint a portrait of Helen, but as he had never seen her, he travelled to Croton to select a group of women whose beauty rivalled Helen’s.
Picasso, at this point, opts not for beauty but for deformation, thereby bidding farewell to everything he had learnt "aangeleerd". In 1997, I created this work for the same reason… I started painting and working differently, and how wonderful it is to use this painting as a benchmark!