Cubism was the most influential movement in the 20th century which took a revolutionary shift in approach to creating art.
It was invented by iconic artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque who inspired the whole next generation.
The progress of this movement dragged artists of other movements including Impressionism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, Berlin Secession, and others to showcase their talents.
There is a lot to discuss in the Cubism movement, however, we’re going to settle on artists of cubism who massively influenced other artists.
1. Pablo Picasso
There were no reasons for not putting this Cubist artist’s name on the #1
Pablo Picasso was one of the most influential artists of Cubism; he created over 50,000 works of art in his career.
The prolific Cubism painter’s works were categorized into periods. Popular cubism artworks were under the Blue Period.
Besides, there was the Rose Period, African Influenced Period, Analytic Period, and Synthetic Period.
His works were also featured in Expressionism and Surrealism. And the world started recognizing him for challenging traditional notions of perspective and angular shapes.
He, along with Braque, invented this concept of Cubism — the sole purpose is to bring out painters who love to create human figures with geometric shapes.
Interesting Fact: Four Picasso canvases were shown at the Louvre in 2015 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Musée National Picasso-Paris.
Interested to know about paintings in the France museum? Do check out the famous paintings in Louvre that’ll convince you to visit the museum.
Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Printmaking, Stage Design, and Writing.
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Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Guernica, The Weeping Woman, and Le Reve.
Suggested: Famous Paintings Of Pablo Picasso That Remind The World Of His Legacy.
2. Georges Braque
The most loyal friend of Picasso was none other than Georges Braque.
Despite the fact that he switched style and color, he still worked with Cubist ideas and aided Picasso in the expansion of the movement.
Did you know? Most ideas incorporated in the Cubism movement were already used in Favism.
The motto of these two talented Cubism artists was to incorporate collages and the use of the entire canvas in order to display what reflected the modern age.
Georges Braque, a Cubist artist, was highly recognized for his work characterized by bold colors and sharp, defined angles.
Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, and Printmaking
French
Houses At l’Estaque, Fruit Dish and Glass, Violin and Candlestick, and Little Harbor in Normandy.
3. Juan Gris
The most demanding, highly appreciated, and meaningful Cubist artwork belonged to Juan Gris.
The Cubism movement brought name, fame, and fortune to his destiny.
The year 1911 was actually his turning point — the French artist wasn’t serious about paintings and artistic works before.
Post-1911, he started developing his own style and made his name across boundaries.
Pablo Picasso’s Cubist art motivated him to contribute to the movement. As a devotee of him, he recreated Picasso’s Cubism self-portrait “Portrait Of Pablo Picasso” in 1912.
Juan Gris, one of the voguish artists of Cubism, was known for combining different viewpoints of subjects in one image.
His Cubism artwork directs to a new way of imagination that reflects the complexity of the modern age — that’s what Cubism serves for.
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4. Albert Gleizes
The original inventors of the Cubism movement were Piccaso and Braque.
However, folks at the time considered him as the inventor of the Influential art movement due to his tremendous contributions and creative mindset.
Albert Gleizes, a Cubism artist, was actually driven by his social ideals in order to produce the finest pieces of art that are contrary to the Bourgeois Canon.
His artworks became increasingly characterized by dynamic intersections of geometric planes because of the influence of Pablo Picasso and other Cubist inspired artists.
During the Cubism period, he produced several paintings — La Femme aux Phlox was the best among them.
5. Jean Metzinger
Jean Metzinger was one of the prolific artists of cubism who was also a prominent member of the French Avant-Garde.
Metzinger was best known for Cubist paintings such as Le goûter (Tea Time) (1911), which combined the Divisionist brushstrokes of Georges Seurat with modeled forms and multiple angles.
Jean started working on the cubism style when it was flourishing in European art.
This Cubist artist’s idea was to distort the space around the object and put pieces of those objects in multiple planes.
He was one of the artists of Cubism who embraced this concept with open hands. And he also nurtured it throughout his career and made it big in front of novice artists.
Although Picasso and Braque introduced this idea of art to the world, Jean Metzinger took it to another level and spread its relevance.
6. Andre Lhote
Andre Lhote was one of the thoughtful, versatile, and super talented artists of Cubism.
And he was a gifted man with marvelous painting and sculptural skills.
Although the 2nd half of his career was more inclined to art education — opening schools in Paris, Brazil, and other parts.
His first half was quite meaningful and artistic as his main interest was Cubism.
After studying sculpture between (1898-1904), he would practice painting in his spare time.
In 1905, he decided to devote his time to painting. Under the influence of Gaugin and Cezanne, he made major decisions including the creation of Cubism paintings.
Within 4 years, Lhote held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Druet. By the time, he shifted towards Analytical Cubism: the first, most abstract style of Cubism.
7. Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali’s first encounter with Cubism occurred in 1922.
He was a Cubist from the time he was in school, and he painted and sketched for five years.
Dali was a Cubist artist who enjoyed experimenting with various styles, influences, and techniques.
The 1923 Autorretrato cubista (Cubist Self-Portrait) by Salvador Dali is a superb example of how influences can collide.
He added a composition from Analytical Cubism, which Picasso was working on circa 1910, with its African aesthetics.
Suggestive Reading: Famous artworks by Salvador Dali
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8. Paul Cezanne
Cezanne, one of the artists of Cubism who was credited with bridging the gap between impressionism in the late 19th century and cubism in the early 20th century.
Despite the fact that the painting ‘Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen From The Bibemus Quarry’ was created before the movement, it still impacted the lives of aspiring Cubism artists.
Paul Cezanne always brought unusual stuff to the table. That’s why he explored Cubism art for two reasons: geometry and perspective
He was recognized for combining color planes and small brushstrokes to add intensity to his works.
Besides, in most paintings, each item appears to have its own autonomous space with its own point of view, which contradicts the Renaissance’s customary single-point-of-view linear perspective.
Following Cezanne’s lead in defying traditional laws of perspective, the Cubists went even farther by presenting several views of the same subject from various viewpoints at the same time, which is another characteristic of their style.
His paintings influenced several Cubist artists, including Braque, Metzinger, and Picasso. And he was regarded as the father of cubism as well as the father of modern art.
9. Piet Mondrian
The extreme work of Paul Cezanne and the Cubist painters piqued the curiosity of Dutch artists, who were increasingly aware of the radical work of Cezanne and the Cubist painters.
Fascinated by the new form of art, they were compelled to abandon landscape painting in favor of fresh cubism concepts.
When Piet Mondrian first saw Picasso and Braque’s Cubism paintings in 1911, he was deeply affected.
In 1912, he traveled to Paris to study Cubism and rapidly became involved in the movement.
Initially, his paintings mimicked Cubism’s Analytic approach (which is the second period of Cubism).
The use of primitive shapes and overlapping surfaces to express the individual forms of the subjects in a painting was studied in this type of Cubism.
He was known for his use of beige, grey, and ochre colors, as well as straight lines and arcs.
Cubism’s creators were interested in portraits of people; he was more interested in nature and its other aspects, and he was adept at sketching them using a network of angles and grids.
He created the new style of horizontal and vertical axes with splashes of color, later known as neoplasticism, with his use of space and disciplined approach.
Also Read: 12 Paintings Of Romanticism That Made This Movement Popular
10. Lyonel Feininger
Lyonel Feininger was one of the artists of Cubism who has had success in the realm of caricature art, both in Germany and in the United States.
His works in fine art painting, particularly in the Cubism style, were extraordinary.
His first love was music, despite the fact that he was the most well-known cubism artist.
When he returned to Paris, he was inspired by Robert Delaunay to paint in a colorful style of Analytical Cubism, using overlapping planes of color and crossing rays of light to represent architectural topics such as churches and castles.
Lyonel Feininger had been working on comic strips for the Sunday edition of The Chicago Tribune, which had been commissioned by editor James Keelay.
Feininger’s expressive style, which was a mash-up of Orphism, Cubism, and Rayonism, wowed Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc of the Der Blaue Reiter group, who invited Feininger to perform alongside them in 1913.
11. Fernand Leger
Fernand Leger, a Cubism artist, was considered one of the forefathers of Pop Art.
For its cylindrical shape in one of his paintings, he garnered a good amount of attraction for the first time.
Fernand never followed the path of Picasso and Georges.
These Cubist artists explored ways to show the heightened reality of the subjects — they fragmented subjects into geometric planes, depicting multiple simultaneous perspectives to imply movement and the passage of time.
In Fernand’s case, he valued its potential to highlight art, and discard its formal and plastic elements.
By shifting the focus from theme to object and plasticizing the aspects of aesthetics, Leger elevated abstract art to new heights, laying the groundwork for many key art movements to follow.
He would combine abstract geometric forms with vivid colors, and create abstract compositions that evoke nature and machines.
Due to this, his style earned him Tubism, eschewing narrative subject matter in favor of a visual statement that was objective, modern, and fascinating.
You should also check out our new blog on Famous Abstract Painters, which tells about the struggle the artists faced in the movement.
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I’ve listed 11 artists of Cubism who’ve contributed a lot during the movement and brought it to great heights.
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