Picasso returns to Paris in September, 1906 after a summer sojourn with his companion Fernande Olivier in the Catalonian village of Gósol. His late Rose Period work at Gósol depicting depersonalized sculptural figures in two dimensions will become the dominant style in the African Period. An extensive series of nudes with raised arms seen from different angles is followed by oil studies for the Demoiselles d'Avignon and the first studies for the oil Woman in Yellow. Picasso creates the chief masterpiece of the African Period, the Demoiselles d'Avignon during the summer. André Salmon provided the sly title, which has no relationship to the genesis or themes of the picture, that began as a bordello scene in Barcelona. The revolutionary nature of the painting is confirmed by the strong negative reactions within Picasso's own circle. The impact of the Demoiselles d'Avignon would quickly lead to an even more revolutionary style thanks to the Fauvist artist Georges Braque who converted the angular forms within the Demoiselles d'Avignon into the first Cubist works. Picasso next does a series of finely executed oil, watercolor and tempera studies for Nude with Drapery. In late 1907 or early 1908 Picasso does a series of studies for the important painting Friendship. As with many works of this period, the painting was purchased by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936) and then confiscated by the Bolsheviks and later placed in the Hermitage (St. Petersburg) and Pushkin (Moscow) museums. The Offering, is one of the few works from this period in the Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Several culinary still-lifes are followed by oils depicting a bust of a female nude and a still-life with a skull. The next series are studies for Woman with a Fan, now in St. Petersburg. Picasso spends the summer of 1908 in La Rue-des Bois, a small hamlet next to the Halatte Forest in the Oise department of Picardy, about 50 km north of Paris. For the first time green becomes the predominant color in Picasso's work. On his return to Paris, Picasso begins the first studies on the theme of Carnival at the Bistro, but there is no definitive oil with this motif. Instead, Picasso transforms the figures in the Carnival series into a still-life: Loaves of Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table, now in the Kunstmuseum Basel.

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