Cubism
"Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been used for 500 years. It confused people: they said,
'Things don't look like that!'"
One of the most influential art movement of the 20th century, Cubism was founded around 1907 and 1908 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque with the aim to reject the traditional techniques of perspective and refuting the idea of art as pure imitation of nature. By breaking objects and figures down into distinct areas or planes, the artists aimed to propose a revolutionary new approach to represent reality. Explore Cubism by starting from What is Cubism? and browse our curated list of artworks from cubism painters such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and others.
Cubism Quotes
Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, 'Things don't look like that!'
David Hockney
What greatly attracted me - and it was the main line of advance of Cubism - was how to give material expression to this new space of which I had an inkling. So I began to paint chiefly still lifes, because in nature there is a tactile, I would almost say a manual space... that was the earliest Cubist painting - the quest for space.
Georges Braque
If I have called Cubism a new order, it is without any revolutionary ideas or any reactionary ideas... One cannot escape from one's own epoch, however revolutionary one may be.
Georges Braque
Let them eat their fill of their square pears on their triangular tables!
Henri Matisse
When we discovered Cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.
Pablo Picasso
The goal I proposed myself in making cubism? To paint and nothing more... with a method linked only to my thought... Neither the good nor the true; neither the useful nor the useless.
Pablo Picasso
I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.. .I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.
Georges Braque
