The most influential movements of the 20 th century is Cubism

INTRODUCTION.

Throughout history, the art world has witnessed many different styles, periods and movements.

One of the most influential movements of the 20

century is Cubism. The name is very common

and many individuals have heard of it. However, what is the movement actually about? What

does it stand for? Who are the main influencers and contributors? The answers to these questions

are not widely known. Identifying the markers of the movement and how it impacts our daily

lives is not something many individuals can answer. Cubism could be said to have single-

handedly revolutionized how the Europeans understood art. Occurring between the

expressionism and surrealism movements, cubism dealt with objective analysis (Barr, 2019).

Cubism was an art movement that began in 1907 in France and it’s often characterized by the use

of geometry and symmetrical shapes. Cubism is an early 20

-century movement that involved

breaking down of subjects into cubes and other forms of geometry in an abstract arrangement as

opposed to a realistic representation. It was the new revolutionary approach to the representation

of reality in 1907 – 1908 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. They brought about a

completely different view of figures and subjects, appearing in the same picture which resulted

in the paintings that appeared abstracted and fragmented (Barr, 2019).

The movement is agreed to have been catapulted by Picasso’s famous painting Demoiselles

d’Avignon which had elements of the new style. In this painting, the figures of the five nude

females are fractured, fragmented and has a lot of angular planes. Through colour, the warm hues

of reddish-brown and the cool blue render the perspective of the painting. The name ‘Cubism’

itself is seeming to have been derived from the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, who commented on a

painting, Houses at l’Estaque, by Georges Braque, during a Paris exhibition in 1908 where he

describes the painting as the essential reduction of everything to ‘geometric outlines, to cubes’. In