The Evolution of Cubist Spaces in the Early 20th Century
Art movement
Jean Metzinger, Tea time
The Cubist movement emerged in France, translating into the visual arts and literature the various changes that took place during the early twentieth century. The birth of photography and the Theory of Relativity, developed by Albert Einstein in 1905, were decisive moments that led to scientific knowledge gaining ground in artistic creation.
This awakening towards fields such as phys- ics, mathematics, and geometry became the stimulus for a form of representa- tion that was distancing itself from the mimetic image, traditionally associated with art. Abandoning the perfect form and the copying of the visible, using geome- try and the idea of planning the world, there began a road of no return to an abstract conception of the artwork. The notions of space and time involved images of speed and modernity, fundamental in the life of industrial cities, and dictated compositions that no longer aimed to be static.
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907 Pablo Picasso
Georges Braque, Violin and Palette
It was in painting that the greatest revolution occurred. On the same surface of representation, different points of view appeared, simultaneously, through fragmented, twisted, folded forms. It was time to bring the idea of multidimension- ality to the pictorial space. In 1907, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, by Pablo Picasso, condensed the principal characteristics of the movement: the geometrisation of form; the search for three-dimensionality in the two-dimensional space; the abandonment of the idea of depth, diluting the relationship between figure and background; the reduction of the chromatic palette; and even exoticism, of which the African masks are an example.
The descendants of Post-Impressionism , artists such as Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Francis Picabia, along with Pablo Picasso, played a dominant role in the development of the different phases of Cubism: the Cezannian or pre-analytical phase, between 1907 and 1909, which still adhered to Paul Cézanne's geometries, playing with the representation of nature; the analytical phase, between 1909 and 1912, with a reduced colour pal- ette and more complex readings of the represented object, through succes- sive juxtapositions of planes; and the synthetic phase, starting in 1912, in which colours became more vibrant, outlines took on more expression, the need for recognition of form reappeared, and, through collage, certain materials not associated with painting-such as wood, metal, glass, and cardboard-were introduced, creating appealing plays on texture and three-dimensionality.
Still Life with Open Window, Rue Ravignan, Juan Gris
Despite establishing itself over a short period of time, this movement brought together aesthetic principles that were fundamental for the development of the majority of the artistic movements of the first half of the twentieth century. With the predominance of rectilinear figures and volumetric variations pro- vided by the juxtapositions of chiaroscuro, the idea of an abstract capturing of the world was rooted in the search for simplification and the escape from a commitment to the visible.
In an attitude of decomposition of the object on all its visible faces-as if the artist were observing it from various angles-in Cubism the viewers are invited to move around the reality portrayed. Without leaving their place, turning, travelling, getting to know, the composition of parts leads them to the idea of an all-encompassing representation.
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As the 1960s unfolded, subjectivism faced challenges from new geometric proposals, notably North-American hard-edge painting.