# Demoiselles draws on African and Iberian sculptural sources in a Paris studio without those makers’ authorship

Date: 1907

## The fact

The 1907 Demoiselles, as museums now label it, uses African and Iberian sculptural sources circulating in Paris. This Fact stores that unnamed-source extraction as a public controversy, not a police blotter and not gossip.

## Context

The same canvas is a later MoMA teaching object (improving access). Split signs. Do not rebate extraction with a ticket line.

[Pablo Picasso](/people/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 interpretation and Smarthistory independently discuss African/Iberian sources of the 1907 canvas.

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

## Significance

Cultural-extraction path. Medium-high confidence that the sources are in the public art-historical record.

A source is not a sitter’s private life. Keep gossip out.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 1907 canvas uses African/Iberian sculptural sources now discussed by museums.

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

- Protection of Minority Rights: https://factrail.ai/drivers/protection-of-minority-rights

## 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-african