The use of drawing line is almost nonexistent, however the contours being very clearly defined. The colors contradict each other alternating bright cold shades of blue with warm ochre and pink. The vibration created by blue and white together brings cold atmosphere to the entire palette.
The structure breaks the laws of perspective. On the left side the composition brings a succession of straight figures, with tense rhythm. On the right the arrangement spreads, with characters in open position that draw attention to their caricature masks.
The figures are set in the world of unrealistic: there are no lights or shadows to display their volume. The bodies and background are flat and seem to melt with each other. There is no diversity of levels or third dimension suggested. The blue tones, contoured by white, accentuate the flatness of the piece.
The use of logic in the drawing is annulated by the way the figures contradict their own position: the portraits show front eyes, but profile noses. Perspective became an element used with complete freedom, without respecting the classical rules of logic. The artists uses different perspectives on the same figure.
The use of colors is also free from reality rules. The ochre of the bodies refers to earth color and has a violent contrast with the light blue of the background. The contours are reduced to basic configurations, "V" shapes in the arms and legs of the women....
Straight lines and sharp edges also configure the background images. Space is no longer the common factor that will harmonize the elements of the painting, but an independent component, real and concrete, that can be deformed and decomposed like all the figures.
The two figures in the centre of the composition stand up in a forced body posture, as if they were lying down, but vertical. The sitting figure, the last one painted, breaks all the rules of the lineal and thirdimensional perspective. It presents a posture that would be anatomically impossible and perhaps was a first step toward a surreal representation of reality. Her face and her back are visible from the same point-of-view. It is an optical synthesis that gives special energy to this character and dynamicity to the entire composition, contrasting with the tense, still figures on the left.
It also implies the introduction of a new element that will be developed by contemporary art: the movement. This rupture of traditional perspective developed into what would be called simultaneous vision. This would be used in other movements, such as Futurism, that presents different positions on the same figure to reconstruct the illusion of motion.
References
Penrose, Roland. Picasso, his life and work. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.
