kubisme

Kubisme, also known as Cubisme in French, is an early 20th-century art movement that sought to depict subjects through geometric forms and multiple viewpoints. Emerging in Paris around 1907–1908, it marked a shift away from traditional single-point perspective toward a fragmented representation of space. The term cubisme was popularized by critics such as Louis Vauxcelles. The movement was led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who developed a shared program of reducing natural forms to simplified shapes and reassembling them within the picture plane.

Analytic cubism (roughly 1908–1912) analyzed form by breaking objects into interlocking planes, often in a restrained palette of browns, grays, and ochres. Views from multiple angles are collapsed into a single image, creating a sense of depth through structure rather than linear perspective.

Synthetic cubism (from 1912) introduced the collage technique and brighter, more varied color. Artists pasted elements from real life—newspaper, wallpaper, label fragments—onto painted surfaces to create new meanings and textures.

Beyond Picasso and Braque, artists such as Juan Gris, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger contributed to its evolution, each bringing different approaches to form, color, and material. Cubism influenced architecture, design, and later modern movements (Futurism, Constructivism, De Stijl) by challenging conventional space, form, and representation.

Its emphasis on abstraction, simultaneity, and the reduction of form to essential planes helped redefine modern painting and sculpture, and its ideas continued to resonate through 20th-century art.