Three Dancers, 1925

      For several years Picasso had been treating classical themes in a classical way, and nobody was shocked.  Many of these were family portraits - mainly of Olga and Paulo.  Suddenly, in June 1925, a picture appeared that flabbergasted the critics: the Three Dancers.

Three Dancers, 1925

       Vivid colours, the syncopated movements of three dislocated figures - a woman with head reversed, a leg raised and a breast in the air; another, arms raised as if crucified; the dark profile of a man whose forked hand holds that of the first woman.  With this picture Picasso is said to have been ‘bent on expressing drunken abandonment to unleashed instincts’.

Page 6 of 11