Landscapes became increasingly rare in Picasso's work as the human figure and still-life almost became the exclusive subjects of his cubist experiments in 1910. L'Avenue Frochot was one of the few works from this period where Picasso experimented with a cubist landscape. This work was painted looking out of his atelier at no. 11, Boulevard de Clichy, where Picasso had lived from 1909. Another earlier work, Sacré Coeur (Zervos 2*, no. 196), now in the Musée Picasso in Paris, was also painted from his new atelier. L'Avenue Frochot is clearly later, its more concrete forms and clearer structure are indicative of Picasso's evolving cubist style. By 1911 Picasso was bordering on the frontier of non-figuration, however the incorporation of some legible elements facilitate the reading of the composition. The curving streets, the trees and rooftops are still quite distinct. Marie Therese Ocana writes: "Composed with the strictness and severity of La Rue d'Orchamp (Zervos, 2*, 330), L'Avenue Frochot shows the view from Picasso's studio ... with a reappearance of the figurative and a certain decorativeness which presage later experiments" (M. Theresa Ocana, op. cit.).

This work was exhibited in 1913 at the Modern Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser, the first Picasso retospective in Germany, which included seventy-six paintings and thirty-seven watercolours dating from 1901 to 1912. Thannhauser wrote in the catalogue: "It is widely believed that Picasso's work stands at the origin of the whole Expressionist, Cubist, and Futurist movements ... What distinguishes him from all these movements, even at first sight, is that unlike them he has never expressed his artistic intentions in programmes, mainfestoes or similar pronouncements ... he has never sought to explain his new departures ... he has simply painted" (Exh.cat., Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989, p. 414).