# Picasso completes Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, later dated by museums to 1907

Date: 1907

## The fact

In 1907 [Picasso](/people/pablo-picasso) painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a date museums use for the canvas now at MoMA. It is not yet a public museum door and not a supernatural break with all prior art.

## Context

Studio cubism is a shared 1908–12 labour with Braque stored nearby. Appropriation of African sculptural form is a separate minority-rights row. Do not rebate that row with MoMA’s later crowd.

Pablo Picasso is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

MoMA’s object page and Smarthistory independently date the canvas to 1907.

Official or archival record: MoMA — Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766; Museum of Modern Art).

## Significance

Visual-culture path. High confidence on museum dating.

A studio canvas is not Guernica. 1937 is a different public instrument.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 1907 Demoiselles as a Picasso canvas later publicly dated by MoMA. Not established: that 1907 already had 1939 ticket counts, or that he uniquely invented all modern art.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Pablo Picasso: https://factrail.ai/people/pablo-picasso

## Drivers

- Social Cohesion: https://factrail.ai/drivers/social-cohesion

## Sources

- https://smarthistory.org/picasso-les-demoiselles-davignon/
- https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/pic-demoiselles-1907