However, it expanded and evolved rapidly in Paris so that a large number of Cubist-influenced styles emerged that differ substantially from that of Picasso and Braque. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.Ĭubism gained worldwide recognition from the second decade of the twentieth century onwards. Source: New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Its influence was not limited to painting and sculpture but extended to architecture, poetry, music, literature, and the applied arts.Ī revised and expanded version of this article is available here. Alternative Cubist perspectives were also introduced by painters such as Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Roger de La Fresnaye, and André Lhote and sculptors such as Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens. However, artists such as Fernand Léger ( Les fumeurs, 1912), Juan Gris ( Grapes, 1913), and Robert Delaunay ( Windows, 1912) developed their own distinctive styles, pushing forward the color perspectives, the shifting geometrical elements and the non-objective approach (Léger, Contraste de formes, 1913) of the Cubist synthesis. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and Braque’s Maisons à l’Estaque (1908) are considered to be the first manifestations of proto-Cubist painting. Cubist art was largely influenced by the late work of Paul Cézanne and the study of primitive art and, more precisely, African religious masks, statuettes, and artefacts. The dull and monochromatic palette (Picasso, Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, 1911) of early Cubist painting, in addition to its emphasis on geometry, can be alternatively viewed as a reaction against the pure bright colors of the Fauves and the spontaneous color treatment of the Impressionists.

Cubism signals the break with Renaissance tradition through the rejection of three-dimensional illusionist composition. Subsequently, it soon became a commonplace term and was widely used to describe the formalist innovations in painting pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque from 1907 to 1914. The term was established by Parisian art critics, derived from Louis Vauxcelles, and possibly Henri Matisse’s description of Braque’s reductive style in paintings of 1908. Although Picasso’s work spanned almost a century, when people think of Picasso they often conjure up an image of one of his renowned Cubist paintings.Cubism is an influential modernist art movement that emerged in Paris during the first decade of the twentieth century. Two artists, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, even published “Du Cubisme,” a book on the subject. In 1912, other Cubist exhibitions swept Europe, but Braque and Picasso did not participate. Written accounts of these works labeled them as the first “Cubists” even after Braque and Picasso had already created several Cubist works. In 1911, an assortment of artists displayed their works in a Paris exhibit. Paintings which exemplified this branch of Cubism are Sonia Delaunay’s “Simultaneous Contrasts,” and Robert Delaunay’s “Circular Forms,” and Leger’s “Contrast of Forms.” Duchamp and Picabia would soon become key members of the Dada movement however, Dadaism focused heavily on multiple art forms, including stream-of-consciousness writing and publication and radical performance art. Notable artists were Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, and Francis Picabia. The second stage of Cubism called Orphic Cubism was a side journey from Picasso and Braque. For example, Braque wrote, “To be pure imitation, painting must make an abstraction from appearances.” These writings were first published in 1917, and they reveal his thinking as a Cubist. Art history lovers can also find written notes by Braque, his aphorisms or expressions of love on the subject of art. Cubist paintings break up figures on canvas, which lends them more depth and life on a two-dimensional surface. In the first stage of Analytic and Synthetic Cubism, Picasso and Braque showed evidence of geometrical forms in Picasso’s “The Three Women” (1908-1909) and “Female Nude” (1910) and Braque’s “Houses and Trees” (1908). “So, abandoning the single viewpoint and normal proportions, reducing anatomy largely to geometrical lozenges and triangles, he completely re-ordered the human image.”

Cubism art movements