Cubist Painters

Although Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso are credited with creating the new visual language of Cubism, it was taken up (from the synthetic phase onwards) and developed further by numerous painters, such as Juan Gris (1887-1927), as well as Fernand Léger (1881-1955), who are considered the third and fourth Cubists. Indeed Cubism had become the dominant avant-garde idiom in Paris as early as 1911, after its proto-type phase and Analytical phase, with painters Robert Delaunay (1885-1941), Albert Gleizes (1881-1953), Roger de La Fresnaye (1885-1925), Jean Metzinger (1883-1956), Francis Picabia (1879-1953) becoming adherents by this time. Other artists experimented with Cubism during its Synthetic phase.

Portrait of Picasso (1912) by
Juan Gris.

Juan Gris

The great Spanish-born French painter Juan Gris practised his own version of Cubism in paintings such as Breakfast (1915). The geometric-style fragmentation, variable drawing styles, and insertion of lettering in this picture are noticably Cubist, but each individual plane remains distinct, without the overlapping or transparency of Picasso’s or Braque’s Cubism.

Fernand Leger

The French Cubist Fernand Leger steered Cubism in the direction of pure abstraction - an option previously rejected by both Braque and Picasso. In his painting, Contrast of Forms (1913), he used the idiom of geometry to produce a totally abstract painting. But while Leger’s painted forms are abstract, their metallic nature implies a respect for modern industry. This outward looking approach was not consistent with that of Picasso or Braque who both favoured a more introspective focus on the nature of art.

L'Artillerie (1911) by Roger de la
Fresnaye.

Other Cubists

Other exponents of Cubism had even more different aims in mind. For example, in the painting L’Artillerie (1911), French Cubist Roger de la Fresnaye made use of geometric simplification not to create ambiguity, but to make a nationalistic statement about French military strength. The American painter Lyonel Feininger used Cubism techniques in his painting Franciscan Church (1924) to imply religious feeling.

French painter Robert Delaunay quit monochromatic Analytical Cubism around 1912 for a new style, called Orphism, characterized by circular forms and vivid colors.

Franciscan Church (1924)
by Lyonel Feininger.

MEANING OF ART
For a guide to the visual arts
and various aesthetic issues,
see: Art Definition.

Notable Paintings By Other Cubists

Juan Gris:
Portrait of Picasso (1913), Art Institute of Chicago.
Breakfast (1915, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris)
Violin and Playing Cards (1913), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
Bottle of Rum and Newspaper (1913), Guggenheim Museum, NYC.
Still-Life (1917), Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Fernand Léger:
In Contrast of Forms (1913, Guggenheim Museum, New York)

Roger de la Fresnaye:
L’Artillerie (1911, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)

Lyonel Feininger:
Franciscan Church (1924, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany

EVOLUTION OF VISUAL ART
For details of art movements
and styles, see: History of Art.
For the chronology and dates
of key events in the evolution
of visual arts around the world
see: History of Art Timeline.

WORLD'S GREATEST ARTWORKS
For a list of the Top 10 painters/
sculptors: Best Artists of All Time.
For the Top 300 oils, watercolours
see: Greatest Paintings Ever.
For the Top 100 works of sculpture
see: Greatest Sculptures Ever.

Influence on Sculpture

Cubism also had a huge influence on sculpture, and sculptors adapted cubist ideas in various ways: notably by the opening up of forms so that voids as well as solids form distinct shapes. Picasso himself made cubist sculpture and other leading artists who worked in the idiom include the painter/sculptor Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), the French sculptors Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973), Henri Laurens (1885-1954), Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), and the Russian sculptors Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964) and Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné. Another noted Cubist sculptor was the Czech Otto Gutfreund, who was part of a remarkable flowering of Cubist art and design in Prague in the years before the first World War. In the applied arts, Cubism was one of the sources of Art Deco and more generally it has had a huge and varied impact on modern visual arts.

Influence on Other Art Movements

Cubism proved immensely adaptable and was the starting point or an essential component of several other art movements. In its general use of image-fragmentation, Cubism influenced Italian Futurism; English Vorticism, Russian Rayonism, while the Russian styles of Suprematism and Constructivism, as well as the Dutch De Stijl movement (like Fernand Leger) turned geometric fragmentation into pure abstraction. Cubism also influenced Robert Delaunay's Orphism, as well as Purism. Other twentieth century groups who benefited from Cubist devices and imagery included: the Dada movement, whose method of combining words with pictures and art with non-art, could not have thrived without Picasso's and Braque's invention of collage; while the inter-war Surrealists were greatly fortified by Cubism's ambiguous imagery. The Cubist legacy also benefited both the German Expressionists, who made use of its forms to sharpen its message, and the Abstract Expressionists who profited from its promotion of the primacy of the flat canvas.

Irish Cubist painters include: Mary Swanzy, Evie Hone and Mainie Jellett.

• For a list of the top painters/sculptors, see: Visual Artists: Greatest.
• For 20th century artworks, see Modern Art, its successor Contemporary Art and Postmodernism.
• For a list of schools and styles, see Modern Art Movements and recent Contemporary Art Movements.
• For styles of painting and sculpture in Ireland, see: Irish Art Encyclopedia.