Art critic Louis Vauxcelles is said to have given the Cubist movement its name by referring to “little cubes” in describing one of Braque’s works in 1908. Indeed the aim of Cubism was to represent its subjects through the association of geometric figures. Reality should be released from its secondary, fleeting aspects in order to find the deep structure of things and fundamental forms (polyhedrons, cylinders, cones etc). In 1907 Picasso (1881-1973) painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, regarded as the first Cubist picture. Braque (1882-1963) began to follow the same path after seeing the painting.
One of the influences on these two artists was Cézanne (1839-1906), with his studies on space, the geometry of volumes, and the relation between colours and shapes. The Cubists also looked to African art and its sculptural qualities that had hitherto been ignored.
The first wave of Cubism was called “analytical”: objects were analysed from several points of view, and their volumes fragmented into myriad facets. The palette was reduced to greys and browns, though great importance was attached to light and transparency of planes.
“Synthetic” Cubism, which followed from 1912-1914, simplified the representation. Instead of multiple points of view, they chose the most appropriate facets for an understanding of the object. Colour reappeared through the use of collage (objects, paper, etc).
Several painters were enthusiastic about Cubism, such as Gris (1887-1927), Delaunay (1885-1941) and Léger (1881-1955) and sculptors like Brancusi (1876-1957) and Duchamp-Villon (18876-1918). The writer Apollinaire lent his support to the movement, as well as contributing his thoughts through his critical writing.
After the First World War, the movement lost momentum but it continued to exert a major influence. Surrealists borrowed its invention of collage, and abstract art owes much to the Cubists’ deconstruction of reality.
