Cubism

The revolution begun by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris around 1907–08, which abandoned the single viewpoint that had ruled painting since the Renaissance. Taking their cue from Cézanne and from African sculpture, they broke objects into facets and showed them from several sides at once. In the first, Analytic phase (to about 1912) guitars, bottles and figures splinter into grey and brown planes; in the Synthetic phase they used brighter colour, simpler shapes and pasted paper (collage). Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Robert and Sonia Delaunay with their Orphism, and Russian painters such as Popova and Udaltsova took it in new directions.

How to tell it apart: objects broken into angular facets and shown from several angles at once, often in muted browns and greys; Futurism uses similar fragments to show motion and speed.

574 works in the quiz. Play a round on Cubism.

Artists

Pablo Picasso · Diego Rivera · Henri Matisse · Paul Cézanne · Marcel Duchamp · Paul Klee · Kazimir Malevich · Georges Braque · Fernand Léger · André Derain · Robert Delaunay · Francis Picabia · Juan Gris · Jean Metzinger · Raoul Dufy · Sonia Delaunay · František Kupka · Marsden Hartley · Alexander Rodchenko · Albert Gleizes · Josef Čapek · Lyubov Popova · Marie Laurencin · Robert Falk · Alexander Archipenko · Jacques Lipchitz · Maurice de Vlaminck · Ossip Zadkine · Victor Brauner · David Bomberg

Best-known works

“Guernica” — Pablo Picasso, 1937
“Les Demoiselles d'Avignon” — Pablo Picasso, 1907
“Les Grandes Baigneuses” — Paul Cézanne, 1906
“Le Rêve” — Pablo Picasso, 1932
“Pitcher and Violin” — Georges Braque, 1910
“Three Musicians” — Pablo Picasso, 1921
“The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even” — Marcel Duchamp, 1915
“Le pigeon aux petits pois” — Pablo Picasso, 1911
“Portrait of Ambroise Vollard” — Pablo Picasso, 1910
“Portrait de Daniel Henry Kahnweiler” — Pablo Picasso, 1910
“Brick Factory at Tortosa” — Pablo Picasso, 1909
“Ma Jolie” — Pablo Picasso, 1911
“The Pipes of Pan” — Pablo Picasso, 1923
“The Accordionist” — Pablo Picasso, 1911
“Violin and Grapes” — Pablo Picasso, 1912
“La Coiffeuse” — Pablo Picasso, 1911
“Ma Jolie” — Pablo Picasso, 1914
“Woman with a Mandolin” — Georges Braque, 1910
“The Woodcutter” — Kazimir Malevich, 1912
“Reading the Letter” — Pablo Picasso, 1921
“Seascape. L'Estaque” — Georges Braque
“Man with a Clarinette” — Pablo Picasso, 1911–1912
“Bottle, Glass, Fork” — Pablo Picasso, 1912
“Houses at l'Estaque” — Georges Braque, 1908
“Head of a Peasant Girl” — Kazimir Malevich, 1913
“Senecio” — Paul Klee, 1922
“Portuguese Woman” — Robert Delaunay, 1916
“Portrait of Pablo Picasso” — Juan Gris, 1912
“The Bottle of Anís del Mono” — Juan Gris, 1914
“Still life with the caned chair” — Pablo Picasso, 1912