6 Artists Who Made Cubism Popular

By Google Arts & Culture

Port Miou (1907) by Georges BraqueMuseo del Novecento

Cubism is an early 20th-century art movement which took a revolutionary new approach to representing reality. Invented in around 1907 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, cubist painting showed objects and people from lots of different angles, fragmented like through a kaleidoscope.

Bowl with Pears (1923) by Fernand LégerMASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

Where does the name of this iconic, influential style come from?. Critic Louis Vauxcelles saw Braque’s paintings exhibited in Paris in 1908. He described them as reducing everything to “geometric outlines, to cubes”. And so the school of 'Cubism' was born.

Seated Woman (1917) by Juan GrisMuseo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

The movement opened up new possibilities for the treatment of visual reality in art and was the starting point for many later abstract styles, including constructivism and neo-plasticism.

Here we explore the artists who inspired the Cubist style and were the main champions of the movement.

Turning Road at Montgeroult (1898) by Paul CézanneMoMA The Museum of Modern Art

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne is said to have formed the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new artistic movement, Cubism.

Through his paintings, Cézanne appeared to be capturing things from slightly different points of view, as well as distilling objects and landscapes into flat planes of color.

Even though Cézanne was mainly trying to create volume through color planes, the future Cubists saw a tendency to represent nature with geometric shapes in his work, which is central to the early development of Cubism.

Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) (about 1894-1905) by Paul CézanneThe National Gallery, London

The artist’s work went on to inspire Cubist artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, and Juan Gris to experiment with ever more complex multiple views of the same subject and break the traditional rules of perspective.

Bust of a Man (The Athlete) (1909) by Pablo PicassoMASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand

Pablo Picasso

As well as being inspired by Cézanne, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso was also influenced by African tribal masks, which are often highly stylized and non-naturalistic, but still present a vivid human image.

Famous for seemingly rearranging the facial features of his subjects, Picasso once said: “A head is a matter of eyes, nose, mouth, which can be distributed in any way you like”.

Melancholy Woman (1902) by Pablo PicassoDetroit Institute of Arts

Picasso’s work moved through many periods during his lifetime, and his Cubist works took shape in two forms. The first was his Analytic Cubism era (1909–1912), which is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque, and saw them using monochrome brownish and neutral colors. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes.

The second was Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), a further development of the genre of Cubism, in which cut paper fragments – often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages – were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.

Natura morta con clarinetto, un ventaglio e un grappolo d'uva (1911 ca.) by Georges BraqueLa Galleria Nazionale

Georges Braque

Georges Braque was a key figure in the development of Cubism, in fact the artist’s work between 1908 and 1912 is so closely associated with that of his colleague Picasso, that for many years their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable. Unfortunately, due to Braque’s quiet nature, the fame and notoriety of Picasso partially eclipses his own work.

The Viaduct at L'Estaque (1908) by Georges BraqueTel Aviv Museum of Art

Braque conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions.

In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading to fragment the image so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional. In 1908, a French critic once described his work as “reducing everything, places and figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes".

Portrait of Pablo Picasso (January-February 1912) by Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)The Art Institute of Chicago

Juan Gris

Born in Madrid, in 1906 Juan Gris moved to Paris and became friends with Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso. Moving on from the satirical cartoons he was known for, in 1910 Gris developed a personal Cubist style and considered the importance of mathematics in painting.

Guitar on a table (1915) by Juan GrisKröller-Müller Museum

Initially Gris painted in the style of Analytical Cubism but after 1913, he began to lean towards Synthetic Cubism and was using collage extensively. Unlike Picasso and Braque who both favored monochromatic palettes, Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in contrasting combinations, which were inspired by Matisse.

The Stairway (1913) by Fernand LégerKunsthaus Zürich

Fernand Léger

In 1911, Fernand Léger was one of a handful of artists who were responsible for revealing Cubism to the general public for the first time in an organized show. Léger’s style of Cubism was personal to him and was called by his critics, “Tubism”, which referenced his penchant to emphasize cylindrical forms.

Up until 1914, Léger’s paintings became increasingly abstract. Their tubular, conical, and cubed forms are rendered in rough patches of primary colors augmented with green, black and white. After the war, the artist’s works became more mechanical in style and elements of this work remained present until he stopped painting in the 1950s.

Tableau no. 1 (1913) by Piet MondriaanKröller-Müller Museum

Piet Mondrian

In 1912, Piet Mondrian moved to Paris to explore Cubism and his work quickly took on attributes of the movement. Initially his paintings echoed the Analytic style of Cubism, particularly through his use of beiges, grays, and ochres as well as his use of straight lines and arcs.

Composition X (1912-1913) by Piet MondrianMuseum Folkwang

While Picasso and Braque created portraits of still lifes, Mondrian was drawn to nature and interpreted that through a network of angles and grids. This use of space and regimented approach eventually led Mondrian down a path toward abstract art and he aimed to “articulate a mystic conception of cosmic harmony that lay behind the surfaces of reality”.

Back in Holland, Mondrian worked to distill his painting style, which saw the development of the artist’s well-known aesthetic of horizontal and vertical axes with pops of color, which would later become known as neo-plasticism.

Grande composizione A con nero, rosso, grigio, giallo e blu (1919 - 1920) by Piet MondrianLa Galleria Nazionale

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