Cubism was the first truly modern movement to emerge in art. This movement evolved during a period of heroic and rapid innovation between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
There were 2 stages of Cubism:
Analytic Cubism this technique involved a close examination and analysis of the subject in order to translate it into flat geometric shapes, angles and lines. Analytic Cubism staged modern arts.
Synthetic Cubism. The main characteristics of synthetic cubism are:
- -Brighter colours
- -Simpler lines and shapes
- -Collage is used alongside paint (newspaper/ foreign materials). Previously cubism had broken objects down to a grid of complicated planes (flat shapes). Now the artists built up their pictures using collage and simple shapes. So instead of looking closely at an object such as a bottle in order to analyse its shape and structure they created a bottle-like shape from their imagination, making this shape from a simple paper cutout or drawn outline. This Cubism stage explored the use of foreign objects as abstract signs.
This was developed by Fernand Léger and Juan Gris, but this attracted host of adherents in Paris and abroad. The was for geometric abstract art by putting an entirely new emphasis on the unity between the scene in a picture and surface of the canvas.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a Spanish painter, sculpture, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright. In his paintings, Picasso used color as an expressive element, but relied on drawing rather than subtleties of color to create form and space. He sometimes added sand to his paint to vary its texture. In his Cubist paintings there are forms recognised as guitars, violins and bottles. Picasso mainly painted from imagination or memory. Som of his most famous work includes: 'The Madolin Player' 'Guernica ' Head Of A Woman'.
Guernica is a mural sized oil painting created in 1937 during World War II. Georges Braque (1882-1963) was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture. Braque's paintings of 1908–1913 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. Braque also created mainly oil canvas paintings. Some of his work includes 'The Mandora' 'Plate And Fruit Dish' 'Violin And Candlestick'.
Fernand Léger (1881-1955) was a French painter, sculpture, and filmmaker . In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style. His boldly simplified treatment of modern subject matter has caused him to be regarded as a forerunner of pop art.
Some of his work 'The City' 'Man And Woman' 'The Railway Crossing'.
Juan Gris (1887-1927) was a Spanish painter and sculptor. Gris's works from late 1916 through 1917 exhibit a greater simplification of geometric structure, a blurring of the distinction between objects and setting, between subject matter and background. Some of his work 'Fantomas' 'Still Life With Fruit Dish and Mandolin' 'Violin And Checkerboard'.
