Cubism

 CUBISM

Cubism is 20th century avant garde art movement that revolutonized European art. Until the first decade of 20th century, art, was essentially pictorial and  was based on themes of real world ideas, with the emergence of a new "modernist" thinking and an increasing use of machines in industry and daily life, artists sought new ways to interpret the changes taking place around the world. Modern concepts of art were born in Europe. Modern artists reacted abandoning intellect for intuition and depicting the world as they percieved it, they rejected the old victorian standars of how art should be made. Cubism emplied a rupture with the classical aesthetic and a new way to see works of art with the eyes of the mind. The viewer is obligaged to move his eyes to reasemble the picture. Cubism is one of the most influential art styles and it was pioneered by Pablo Picasso and George Braque in Paris , 1907. Its main characteristics are the use of geometric forms, mostly cilinders, cones, spheres and cubes. Artists reduced and fractured the objects into geometric forms and then reasembled them to show several views of objects simultaneously.

In 1914, the start of the world war I wiped out a generation of young artists. After the war, many cubist artists continued developing this style at the U.S.A. where modern art became popular as in the case of collage.  

In fact the geometric forms gave the name to the movement.
Cubism is not only found in paintings but also in literature , poetry and arquitecture.
The major part of the work has been done between 1907 and 1914 .
Les demoseilles D"avignon is the first cubist work done by P.picasso... (  Although this is a painting about prostitutes in France   which caused
surprise was not the sexual subjet. It was the new and revolutionary tecnique).
As the cubist artists rejected the established concept that art should copy nature as well as the traditional tecniques did.


According to critics of art from that time this movement has been divided in two phases:

The first one is called ANALITIC CUBISM where painters reduced and fractured the objects into geometric forms to realined them, so that they could  be reassembled in an abstrat form, the predominant colours were the monocromatic of blue, grey, green and brown.

This ANALITIC period lasted up to 1912 when Picasso incorporated everyday materials such as newspaper cuttings, tickets, tobacco wrappers to the paintings , this marked a difference from the previous phase. So this second Phase was known as SINTHETIC CUBISM.
by introducing physicall elements of real life art  ,would become more real and simpler.Colour and texture became more relevant and the word Collage gained and space within art.

Although cubist painters intertwined their work with other styles , from time to time they came over to cubism.In 1937  P. Picasso painted  El Guernica, which reflects the Spanish civil war in the city of guernica and the total destruction of the same.
In this picture there is no colour at all , just white and black to express the horror, the sadness  and the mourning.

  It is necessary to mention in the arquitecture field the work done by Le Corbusier and the Curuchet house here in La Plata.

arquitecture characteristics:
 spacial ambiguity,transparency and multiplicity. not classical perspective. IT BECAME AN INFLUENTIAL FACTOR FOR MODERN ARQUITECTURE FROM 1912 . IT IS THE LINKING OF BASIC GEOMETRIC FORMS, BEAUTY AND INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION..

In Argentina one of the most well known  cubist painter  is Emilio Pettoruti who has been highly influenced by their contemporaries.

More pictures here.