Cubism Art and Paintings

In art, Cubism means showing objects and figures as flat, geometric planes seen from several viewpoints at once, instead of creating the illusion of depth. Tate calls it a revolutionary new approach to representing reality, invented around 1907–08 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, in which artists broke their subjects into distinct planes to show different viewpoints at the same time. The Getty's art vocabulary describes an international movement that developed in phases until the early 1920s.

Sources: Tate: Cubism · Getty AAT: Cubist

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque invented Cubism in Paris around 1907–08. Tate says it is generally agreed to have begun with Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907, which included elements of the Cubist style. Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger and Robert Delaunay soon worked in a Cubist style too, and Fernand Léger turned to it after seeing the early Cubism of Picasso and Braque.

Sources: Tate: Cubism · Tate: All about cubism · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Fernand Léger

Partly. Where copyright lasts 70 years after the artist's death, as in the European Union and the UK, Cubists who died in 1955 or earlier are public domain, among them Juan Gris (died 1927), Kazimir Malevich (1935), Robert Delaunay (1941) and Fernand Léger (1955). Pablo Picasso died in 1973 and Georges Braque in 1963, so their paintings stay protected there until the end of 2043 and 2033; Tate and the Met still show them with a copyright line. Jean Metzinger (died 1956) follows on January 1, 2027. In the United States, works published before 1931 are public domain.

Sources: Your Europe (European Union): Copyright · GOV.UK: How long copyright lasts · Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain · Tate: Pablo Picasso, 1881–1973 · Tate: Georges Braque, 1882–1963 · Tate: Cubism · Metropolitan Museum of Art: Pablo Picasso, Woman in an Armchair · Metropolitan Museum of Art: Georges Braque, Candlestick and Playing Cards on a Table · Tate: Juan Gris, 1887–1927 · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Kazimir Malevich · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Robert Delaunay · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Fernand Léger · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Jean Metzinger

The name seems to come from the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who saw Georges Braque's paintings in Paris in 1908 and described them as reducing everything to “geometric outlines, to cubes,” Tate says. Vauxcelles also coined Tubism for Fernand Léger's cylinder-like forms. Orphism, the colorful offshoot of Robert and Sonia Delaunay, was named by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire around 1912–13.

Sources: Tate: Cubism · Tate: Five things to know about Fernand Léger · Tate: Orphism

Cubist paintings break objects and figures into flat geometric planes, show several viewpoints at once and stress the flatness of the canvas instead of an illusion of depth. Tate says the subjects were usually objects or figures; the early phase used muted blacks, grays and ochres, and the later phase brought simpler shapes, brighter colors and pasted newspaper. Léger's tube-like forms and Malevich's repeated, moving figures show how other painters bent the style.

Sources: Tate: Cubism · Tate: Five things to know about Fernand Léger · Yale University Art Gallery

Analytical Cubism is the early phase of Cubism, from about 1908 to 1912, when subjects were broken into a fragmentary pattern of overlapping planes and multiple viewpoints. Tate says these works look more severe, with interwoven planes and lines in muted blacks, grays and ochres, a simplified palette so that color does not distract from the structure of the form. Léger's The Smokers of 1911–12 and Gris's portrait Juan Legua of 1911 keep to this restrained palette.

Sources: Tate: Analytical cubism · Tate: Cubism

Synthetic Cubism is the later phase of Cubism, from about 1912 to 1914, with simpler, flatter shapes, brighter colors and real materials such as newspaper and patterned paper pasted onto the picture. Tate names Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris as its painters and calls the inclusion of real objects in art the start of one of the most important ideas in modern art. Gris's Still Life with a Guitar and Violin and Playing Cards on a Table, both of 1913, show the brighter colors.

Sources: Tate: Synthetic cubism · Tate: Cubism

Orphism, also called Orphic Cubism, is a colorful, abstract style influenced by Cubism that Robert and Sonia Delaunay developed around 1912. Tate says the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term in 1912–13, after the legendary Greek musician Orpheus, to set their work apart from Cubism in general, and that it reflects the idea that painting should be like music; Robert Delaunay called his own work simultanism. The Centre Pompidou also links Picabia's Udnie of 1913 to Apollinaire's Orphism.

Sources: Tate: Orphism · Centre Pompidou

The best-known Cubist artists are Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who invented the style, followed in Paris by Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger and Robert Delaunay. Tate names Gris, Gleizes, Metzinger and Delaunay among the artists who worked in a Cubist style, and Gleizes and Metzinger wrote the book Du “Cubisme” in 1912. In Russia, Kazimir Malevich combined Cubism with Futurism in paintings such as The Knife Grinder, and Lyubov Popova, who had studied with Metzinger and Le Fauconnier in Paris, took the same road.

Sources: Tate: All about cubism · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Albert Gleizes · Yale University Art Gallery · Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza: Liubov Popova

Cubism grew partly out of the late work of Paul Cézanne, who painted things from slightly different points of view, Tate says, and whose figures and landscapes are built of small flat planes and repeated brushstrokes. Fernand Léger's style was shaped by the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1907, according to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Cézanne died in 1906, before Cubism began, and Tate counts him among the four major Post-Impressionists.

Sources: Tate: Cubism · Tate: All about cubism · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Fernand Léger · Tate: Post-impressionism

Picasso was inspired by African masks, which are highly stylized yet present a vivid human image, Tate says; he remarked that a head “is a matter of eyes, nose, mouth, which can be distributed in any way you like.” He also called sculptures from French Polynesia and Africa among “the most powerful and most beautiful things the human imagination has ever produced.”

Sources: Tate: Cubism · Tate: All about cubism

Cubism, invented in Paris around 1907–08, broke still objects and figures into planes seen from several viewpoints; Futurism, launched in Italy by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's manifesto of 1909, set out to show the energy and movement of modern life. Tate says Futurist painting used elements of Neo-Impressionism and Cubism to build its compositions. In Russia the two met in Cubo-Futurism: Yale University Art Gallery says Malevich's The Knife Grinder combines the pictorial vocabulary of Cubism with the dynamism of Futurism.

Sources: Tate: Cubism · Tate: Futurism · Yale University Art Gallery

Cubism's main phase ended around 1914: Tate dates Synthetic Cubism to about 1912–14, and Fernand Léger served in the French army from 1914 to 1917. Some painters, Juan Gris among them, kept working in a Cubist manner, and the Getty's art vocabulary says the movement developed in phases until the early 1920s. Tate calls Cubism the starting point for many later abstract styles, including Constructivism and Neo-Plasticism.

Sources: Tate: Synthetic cubism · Peggy Guggenheim Collection: Fernand Léger · Getty AAT: Cubist · Tate: Cubism