Cubism

Cubism emerged in Paris between roughly 1907 and 1914, developed principally by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and stands as one of the most influential visual art movements of the 20th century. It grew out of Paul Cézanne's late paintings, which broke natural forms down into simplified geometric components, reinforced by major Cézanne retrospectives at the Salon d'Automne in the mid-1900s. Picasso and Braque were also drawn to the formal power of African, Iberian, and Oceanic sculpture, which they encountered in Paris around 1906-1907. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) is widely regarded as the pivotal proto-Cubist painting that broke decisively with single-point perspective and idealized figuration. In 1908, critic Louis Vauxcelles derisively described Braque's landscapes as reducing everything to 'little cubes,' giving the movement its name. Cubism unfolded in two principal phases: Analytic Cubism (c. 1910-1912), in which Picasso and Braque fractured subjects into interlocking planes viewed from multiple angles simultaneously, rendered in a muted, near-monochrome palette; and Synthetic Cubism (from 1912), which introduced brighter color, simplified flat shapes, and the radical technique of collage and papier collé, beginning with Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning (1912). A wider circle of 'Salon Cubists' — including Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, and Juan Gris — exhibited together publicly at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants and articulated the movement's theory in the 1912 treatise Du 'Cubisme,' linking multiple-perspective composition to philosopher Henri Bergson's ideas about time and consciousness. Cubism reached American audiences at the 1913 Armory Show, sparking controversy and fascination. By deconstructing the single fixed viewpoint that had governed Western painting since the Renaissance, Cubism opened the door to abstraction and directly shaped Futurism, Constructivism, and Art Deco, making it arguably the most consequential formal innovation in early modern art.