Cubism is an avant-garde trend, which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century and which was founded by the artists Pablo Picasso and George Braque. Cubist painting breaks with outstanding aesthetic schemes, suppressing perspective and supplanting reality with geometric figures and straight lines. The Cubist art movement gave way to the development of new European styles at that time. Cubism is characterized by the use of geometric figures, such as, cubes, the triangle and rectangles. The word cubism comes from the French expression cubisme and was proposed by Louis Vauxcelles.
History of Cubism
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The cubist painting remained in the history of art for a short time, until mid-1918, but its significance extended far beyond because they were born from there new contemporary styles all around Europe, such as Futurism and Dada, which were born as mimetic trends. In addition to these styles, movements such as surrealism and a large part of the currents connected to modernism were also steeped in its influence.
The cubist painter seeks to dismantle natural forms and show them through geometric shapes that break with surfaces and lines. This multiple vision allowed, for example, to capture a body both from the front and in profile, both at the same time.
Stages of Cubism
Cezanian Cubism or Proto-Cubism
It is named in this way to give credit to the master of the works produced, Paul Cézanne. The predominant styles for this phase were the human silhouette and natural landscapes. This stage is characterized by having distinguishable shapes, which were reduced to pure geometric figures.
Analytical cubism
In this phase of cubism the painting is practically monochromatic in gray and ocher. At that time the colors were not really important, but the different points of view and the geometrization. In addition, "the steps" were included in the painting, determined as soft interruptions in the silhouette line. Also, the large volumes were divided into smaller ones.
Synthetic Cubism
For this stage a new step emerged. Since there was no reason to issue an envelope or a label in detail, just a pattern is captured and pasted, it is the method called papier collé, which was created by Braque and Picasso.
In this it was possible to adhere papers of any kind of material, such as rubber or mat, this being the moment when common materials were incorporated, giving way to the birth of collage.
Synthetic Cubism was characterized by the development of a combination, which starts from fragmented figurative abstractions. It was developed simultaneously by Braque, Picasso and Juan Gris.
This is where the color becomes stronger and the figures much more aesthetic due to the introduction of components such as scraps of wallpaper, pieces of newspaper, cut-out letters and matchboxes.
Characteristics of cubism
Among the most outstanding characteristics of cubist art we can find:
- Multiple perspective: this movement is an act of disobedience that begins against the traditional point of view, proposing to relieve a multiple perspective, which symbolizes the integrity of the objects in a single and unique plane.
- Color management: for the cubist painter the power of the colors of Fauvism and Impressionism were of great interest, who opted more for gray, brown and green tones with very little luminosity. In the first stage of this movement, a monochromatic palette stood out on a large scale, to which little by little more colors were added.
- Beginnings: the beginnings of cubist art are given from the painting "The young ladies of Avignon" by the painter Pablo Picasso, however, those who are pointed out as founders are Cézanne and George Seurat. Certain scholars count the importance of photography in the redemption of pictorial art and the need to be loyal to reality.
- End of Cubism: the end of this art is located towards the middle of the year 1919, which was the post-war period. Cubist painters began different aesthetic paths, such as abstractionism or Dadaism.
- Incursions into Cubism: Artists from other movements made temporary incursions into Cubism. In this way, it was a quite renowned trend in the following artistic academies.
Main artists of cubism
Pablo Picasso
He was a Spanish sculptor and painter, founder of Cubism along with Georges Braque. One of Picasso's most renowned paintings was "The Young Ladies of Avignon" made in 1907.
Another of the important works of this cubist painter is "the woman who cries" is a painting that symbolizes the face of a desperate woman, who cries and suffers, this being one of the examples of pure cubism and one of the paintings that have more historical load.
George Braque
He was a French painter, Cubist creator and promoter, along with Picasso. His extensive works made him go through different trends and styles, which transformed him into one of the greatest exponents of painting of that time.
Among Braque's most outstanding works are: Houses in L'Estaque and Woman with a Mandolin.
John Gray
He was a Spanish illustrator and painter who spread his work in Paris, and who was considered one of the masters of Cubist painting.
His most outstanding works were the portrait he made of Pablo Picasso in 1912 and the work called Guitar and bottle.
Salvador Dali
He is considered the most outstanding painter of the Spanish surrealist trend. After his death, he left a wide collection of works and a new way of understanding art and aesthetics.
This artist had a number of outstanding works in which he is found (La jorneta, 1923 and the great harlequin and the little bottle of rum, 1925).
Fernand leger
He was another of the prominent Cubist painters at the beginning of the 20th century. He made several very famous murals in which are the Fernand Leger bimural, located in the University City of Caracas (Venezuela) and the Mona Lisa with the keys, made in 1930.
Literary cubism
Literary cubism arises from pictorial art, and is named for a simple brotherhood between artists on both sides, and also because there was a lot of similarity between their ideals of artistic escape and abstraction.
The coripheans of cubist painting Apollinaire, Cendrars and Max Jacobs, went hand in hand with the artistic concerns of Juan Gris, Picasso and Delaunay.
Innovative developments in the social sciences, especially of Sigmund Freud's theories, had a tremendous impact on literary art.
In this way, the Cubists showed more enthusiasm in the internal panorama of the person, than in the events that occurred in the external panorama of the neutral world.
Cubist sculpture
In cubist sculpture, principles were maintained that pointed to the use of waste material, using techniques very similar to collage, instead of always working on the same block of marble or stone.
In this way, the "masslessness" technique evolved, thus developing three-dimensional figures with holes and voids on their surface.
Sculptural cubism has the same harmony and the same purposes as pictorial, but its activity is in the third dimension.
The sculptures are characterized by the synchronization of vision, by the intersection of volumes, the new appreciation of materials, the decomposition of figures; it is here where the artist discovers the hole as a sculptural piece. Sculptures such as the woman combing her hair, the gondolier and the standing nude, are examples of cubism.
