This division was introduced later by Kahnweiler who proposed it to better explain and classify the stylistic experimentations and developments of this style. Its division into the two phases “Analytic” and “Synthetic” has been widely used, although it is chronologically flexible and has been questioned by scholarship because it was not literally accepted by Cubist artists. Clearly, this fact not only contributed to the popularization of the perceptual and the geometrically abstract Cubist technique in the following decades, but also reflects the over-simplified and legible repertoire of most of these artists in opposition to the constant experimentation and renovation of Kahnweiler’s protégés.ĭue to its complexity, Cubism became subject to several formal and stylistic categorizations and even philosophical interpretations. A similar reaction is manifested in the works of several other artists such as Lhote and La Fresnaye who practiced a perceptual and quasi-figurative style.Īlthough most of these artists taught Cubism in private art academies and had exhibited their compositions since 1911 at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne, the generators and leaders of this style (Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger) were working in private under the patronage of the art dealer Daniel Henri Kahnweiler. The group’s art can be viewed as a reaction against the conceptual and non-humanitarian approach of Picasso, Braque, and Gris. This became evident in 1911, with the occurrence of the so-called Puteaux Group (1911–13) of Cubist artists, including Alexander Archipenko, Gleizes, Metzinger, Frank Kupka, Marcel Ducham, and Léger, who frequented the studios of Jacques and Raymond Duchamp-Villon. In fact, the style was never homogenous but raised controversy among its agents. In addition to the emphasis on solid geometry, their vivid color palette replaced the proto-Cubist perpetual use of greys, browns, and blacks and opposed its simplified geometrical surfaces that are divided into plastic planes viewed from different angles and result in the conceptual perspective of early Cubism (La Fresnaye, The Conquest of the Air, 1913). This variation mainly resides in the perceptual, either quasi-figurative (Lhote, L'Escale, 1913) or purely abstract Cubist perspective that several artists brought forward (Delaunay, Fenêtres ouvertes simultanément, 1912). 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. Cubism is an influential modernist art movement that emerged in Paris during the first decade of the twentieth century.
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