The figures are confrontational and not conventionally feminine , being rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes, some to a menacing degree. The far left figure exhibits facial features and dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. The two adjacent figures are in an Iberian style of Picasso's Spain, while the two on the right have African mask-like features. Picasso said the ethnic primitivism evoked in these masks moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force" leading him to add a shamanistic aspect to his project.
Drawing from tribal primitivism while eschewing central dictates of Renaissance perspective and verisimilitude for a compressed picture plane using a Baroque composition while employing Velazquez's confrontational approach seen in Las Meninas , Picasso sought to take the lead of the avant-garde from Henri Matisse.
John Richardson said Demoiselles made Picasso the most pivotal artist in Western painting since Giotto and laid a path forward for Picasso and Georges Braque to follow in their joint development of cubism , the effects of which on modern art were profound and unsurpassed in the 20th century. Les Demoiselles was revolutionary, controversial and led to widespread anger and disagreement, even amongst the painter's closest associates and friends.
Henri Matisse considered the work something of a bad joke yet indirectly reacted to it in his Bathers with a Turtle. Georges Braque too initially disliked the painting yet studied the work in great detail. His subsequent friendship and collaboration with Picasso led to the cubist revolution.
At the time of its first exhibition in , the painting was deemed immoral. It was at this exhibition that Salmon, who had previously titled the painting in Le bordel philosophique , renamed it to its current, less scandalous title, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon , instead of the title originally chosen by Picasso, Le Bordel d'Avignon. Picasso came into his own as an important artist during the first decade of the 20th century.
