
On view
Standing Nude Woman (Mademoiselle Léonie)
Paris, 1910
Ink on paper
31.5 × 21.5 cm
Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Madrid. On temporary loan to the Museo Picasso Málaga
The Cubist revolution was set in motion in 1907 by Picasso’s brutal simplification of the figures in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Over the next two years, the artist condensed the body into curves and divided it into facets. In 1910–12 he bid farewell to conventional anatomy, transforming the body into an open framework of planes, cones and cylinders.
‘I saw that everything had been done. A break was needed to create a revolution and start again from scratch. I have put myself at the head of the new movement. The problem is how to go beyond, avoid the object and give artistic expression to the result.’
[Picasso quoted in Alexander Liberman, ‘Picasso’, ‘Vogue’, 1 November 1956, pp. 132–34]

Learn more
What was happening in 1910?
- Picasso is in his Analytical Cubist period, dividing his time between Barcelona and Paris.
- The Seine floods Paris, seriously affecting thousands of people.
- The painter Henri Rousseau dies.
- In Spain, the anarcho-syndicalist workers’ union CNT (National Confederation of Labour) is founded.