A Beginner’s Guide to Cubism: Art Movement, Artists, and Masterpieces

If you have an eye for abstract art, you’ll love Cubism.

Cubism is an early 20th-century art movement pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque that revolutionized European painting by depicting subjects from multiple viewpoints simultaneously, breaking them into geometric shapes and reassembling them in an abstract form. Starting around 1907–08, early cubist artists rejected ideas founded in preceding areas like Neoclassicism and Realism. 

Instead of creating the illusion of depth, they embraced the two-dimensional limitations of a canvas. Cubism's fragmented and geometric formalism, multiple perspectives, and emphasis on structure and form revolutionized the pictorial representation of reality. Put simply, Cubism created a new way of painting that shows things from different angles all at once.

Key figures to emerge from Cubism include Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Jean Metzinger—all of whom used tone and fragmentation to create a new visual language that will be remembered as one of the most iconic modern art movements. 

Early Origins of Cubism: Meet the Founders of Cubist Art

Cubism dates back to 1907 when Pablo Picasso met Georges Braque. Both artists were highly influenced by their encounters with African masks and Paul Cézanne. African art’s structural clarity and simplified forms inspired these artists to create works full of overlapping planes, whereas Cézanne’s uniquely truncated representation of three-dimensional space showed them how to translate these ideas to a canvas.

They developed a method of working that "analyzed" objects into geometric shapes and fragmented forms, creating a new pictorial language that foregrounded multiple perspectives across a lattice-like interplay of light and space. 

Instead of painting something just as we see it from one spot, these founding artists started breaking the subject into pieces. They'd show the front, sides, and even back of something in the same painting. Think of it like taking photos of an object from different positions, cutting those photos into pieces, and then rearranging them on a single canvas.

How Can You Tell If a Painting Is Cubist? 3 Defining Characteristics of Cubism

Multiple Perspectives

Renaissance artists thought of painting as a window onto the world. They perfected the single-perspective style and strived to make art look as "real" as possible. But Cubist painters rejected the notion that objects rendered in this traditional manner were any more "real" than the flat surface of a canvas itself.

Cubists noticed something important about how we actually experience the world: we don't see things from just one fixed point. 

When you look at someone's face, then move your head just a bit to the side, you suddenly see parts that were hidden before—maybe the curve of their cheek or the side of their nose that wasn't visible from straight on. Our understanding of objects and people comes from mentally combining all these different viewpoints.

Influenced by art that didn't adhere to Western perspectives, Cubists attempted to capture the multiple perspectives from which we all observe the world at any moment. "Moving around" their themes mentally, simultaneously portraying objects from multiple viewpoints. Instead of freezing one moment from one position (like a photograph), Cubists layer different viewpoints together—showing the front of a face alongside its profile or the top of a table while also showing its side.

Geometric Fragmentation

As Cubism evolved, Braque and Picasso broke objects up into smaller and smaller planes and facets until they were virtually unrecognizable in a shallow plane of monochromatic shards. Reducing an image to geometric figures—cubes, cylinders, spheres, cones—Cubism took artistic abstraction to new heights. 

They created rhythm by repeating similar shapes throughout their paintings, emphasizing the reconstruction of reality according to a conceptual understanding rather than through visual appearances alone. This sense of rhythm was heightened by abstract expressionist artists who incorporated their whole bodies in the painting process. 

Sharp points, angular intersections between planes, and crystalline shapes that deconstructed organic figures into their geometric equivalents fragmented or "analyzed" visuality to reveal glimpses of an underlying structure.  

Instead of showing how things look, they showed how many small shapes can work together to create an image we understand in our minds.

Flattened Pictorial Space 

Instead of relying on traditional illusionistic depth, Cubism accepts the limitations of painting three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface. Treating the canvas as a material surface rather than a window, Cubism blended background and foreground as a unified surface. 

Rejecting atmospheric techniques—such as blurred details and edges becoming gradually softer the further away the distance depicted—objects were pushed forward towards the viewer rather than receding. 

Braque once said, "I interpose closely spaced overlapping planes, so that it is understood that one thing is in front of another instead of distributed in space." This methodology involved the viewer in a perspectival tension between the two-dimensional canvas and the three-dimensional subject matter portrayed. 

Analytical Cubism vs. Synthetic Cubism 

The first manifestation of Cubism, generally termed Analytical, emerged between 1908 and 1912. These early works are often characterized by a monochromatic severity: interweaving muted colors that go well with black. 

Picasso and Georges Braque used these brownish and neutral colors to "analyze" their subjects into geometric fragments. In 1910, Picasso and Braque met Fernand Léger, who, under their influence, also became an important figure who embraced the analytical style. 

Emerging between 1912 and 1914, Synthetic Cubism moved away from the Analytic approach in favor of simpler shapes and brighter colors, which all but dispensed with earlier allusions to three-dimensional space. Synthetic Cubism also brought together—or "synthesized"—cut paper fragments or papier collé into the compositional facture of a painting. Juan Gris, along with Picasso and Braque, would further explore the geometric deconstruction of objects and space during Cubism's Synthetic phase. 

Famous Cubist Painters and Their Notable Works

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) 

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was an artistic prodigy who began drawing from an early age. Co-founding Cubism with Georges Braque, his artistic versatility across seven decades has made him one of the most important artists of the 20th century. 

Picasso's proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) paved the way for the movement and brought a good deal of controversy in its wake. 

His Portrait of Kahnweiler (1910), an art dealer extended the breakdown of solid forms even further. An exemplary work of Analytical Cubism, Kahnweiler and his surroundings simultaneously materialize and dematerialize as the viewer looks at the painting.

Angular aspects are also prominent in Ma Jolie (1911–1912), where Picasso depicts musical motifs, alluding to a figure holding a musical instrument. 

Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass (1912) introduced collage, becoming an early exponent of Synthetic Cubism.

After WWI, Picasso’s Three Musicians (1921) would mimic collage, creating spatial ambiguities through puzzle-like shapes. 

Finally, his monumental anti-war painting, Guernica (1937), would expose the viewer to the violence of war, using Cubist techniques to depict fragmenting bodies.

Georges Braque (1882–1963)

Georges Braque (1882–1963) developed his Cubist style after meeting Picasso. His early cubist works share many parallels with Picasso's. Braque enlisted in the French Army to fight in World War I, effectively ending their artistic collaboration (Picasso being a citizen of neutral Spain). Today, Braque's monochromatic approach to Cubism continues to influence new generations of artists. 

In Houses at L'Estaque (1908), Braque's limited color palette simplifies forms into cubes and cylinders. An early work, it led the art critic Louis Vauxcelles to coin the term "Cubism." 

Subsequent works like Violin and Palette (1909–10)—which explored musical themes—would incorporate more nuanced shape and form arrangements. 

These paintings, such as The Portuguese (1911), which also uses a limited color palette to depict different planes and perspectives, would typify Analytical Cubism.

Braque's Fruit Dish and Glass (1912) became one of the earliest Cubist works to use papier collé ("pasted paper")—a technique that would become a hallmark of Synthetic Cubism.

Another important work from this period, Still Life with Playing Cards (1913), exemplifies Braque's use of geometric fragmentation, introducing a staccato rhythm into the stenciled lettering and playing cards featured in the work.

Painted in 1913, Braque's Woman with a Guitar took Synthetic Cubism towards a flatter, more decorative end. Still working with a neutral color palette, Braque uses minuscule brushwork to depict a woman’s figure from all sides simultaneously. 

Studio V (1949–50) is a later work that evokes rather than precisely delineates its theme. Identifiable objects are arrayed into a pattern of simplified forms and textures, showing the lasting influence of Cubism on his later style. 

Juan Gris (1887–1927)

Born in Madrid, Juan Gris (1887–1927) moved to Paris in 1906 and (alongside Picasso and Braque) became an early practitioner of Cubism. With a background in engineering, his mathematically precise approach was a defining aspect of his artistic development and brought systematic rigor to Cubism’s Synthetic phase.  

Significant works by Gris include his Portrait of Pablo Picasso (1912), in which he depicts Picasso the painter, drawing upon the Analytical Cubist style. Fracturing his sitter into sharp-edged geometries, the inscription at the bottom of the work testifies to Gris’s respect for Picasso as the leader of a new artistic vanguard. 

Still Life with Checked Tablecloth (1915) is a highly structured work of Synthetic Cubism, blurring the division between object and setting, subject matter and background. 

Similarly, Violin and Glass (1915) uses the still-life motif as a prismatic plane for pictorial possibilities. Both works demonstrate Gris’s penchant for mathematical precision and his sense of color.  

The Sunblind (1914) presents a complex architectural structure in which the illusionistic appearance of painted blinds contrasts with a newspaper clipping collaged into the work. 

Using a folkloric motif, Harlequin with Guitar (1919) would provide another theme in which Gris could blend abstraction with identifiable objects. 

Showcasing his systematic rigor, Gris's Guitar and Fruit Dish (1919) reduces representational elements to their most basic geometric contours.

In a later work, The View Across the Bay (1921), Gris applies his Synthetic Cubist style to a fragmented yet harmonious composition of a coastal scene—rendered in planar textures that lend the painting a sense of depth and rhythm. 

Fernand Léger (1881–1955)

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker whose artistic evolution was shaped by his World War I experiences and his architectural draftsman background. Inspired by the increasing ubiquity of machines, his bold, tubular shapes—sometimes referred to as "tubism"—link modern art to contemporary movements like Purism and even Pop Art. His artistic vision sought to make modern art more accessible to working-class people.

Nudes in the Forest (1909–10) is an early work in which human contours are reduced to cylinders, cones, and spheres, suggesting machinery. 

The melding of Cubism to machine-age imagery is also featured in The City (1919), a mural-like composition enveloping the viewer in the advertisement-like scaffolding of urban life. 

Three Women (1921) features three monumental female figures rendered as volumetric, machine-like forms, and Mechanical Elements (1920) presents a syncopated arrangement of cylindrical and mechanical shapes set against a framework of horizontal and vertical lines.  

The Card Players (1917) combines Cubist fragmentation with an almost filmic sensibility. Although this painting is Cubist, expressing multiple views from a single angle, bold colors provide a distinctive antipode for depicting shadows. 

In Contrast of Forms (1913), Léger pushed his visual vocabulary towards near-total abstraction. The series presents assorted calibrations of cylindrical, cubic, and planar units. 

The Mechanic (1920) is another near-perfect fusion of the human figure and machine. Portraying a robust, stylized figure of a man in profile, geometric shapes, and contrasting colors allude to mechanical themes represented in abstract art. 

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953)

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) was a French autodidact painter and writer. A key theorist of Cubism, he co-authored Du Cubisme (1912) with Jean Metzinger. Gleizes’s work incorporated ideas of movement, rotation, and spiritual philosophy. His engagement with art's social aspects led him to establish art communities dedicated to integrating art and everyday life. 

Harvest Threshing (1912) blends fragmented forms, movement, and abstraction into a composition describing rural labor. Elements commonly seen in famous landscape paintings are simplified into geometric shapes, emphasizing rhythm and motion. 

Woman with Phlox (1910) marked an important transition in Gleizes’ development towards Cubism. Depicting a seated woman surrounded by flowers, this early work retains elements of Post-Impressionism with hints at a fractured perspective. 

Later, Gleizes’ fragmented portrait of his poet friend, Portrait of Jacques Nayral (1911), would be composed from memory. This associationist method would inspire works by other Cubists, including Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay. 

The Football Players (1912–13) captures the movement and energy of a sports scene through geometric abstraction. Gleizes uses overlapping planes, fragmented forms, and multiple perspectives to convey the motion and force of the players in action. 

Woman with Animals (1914) fuses background and figure into successive views. An early example of Crystal Cubism, the primacy of an underlying geometric structure controls all of the elements of the painting, revealing a complex arrangement of figures and animals. 

Similarly, Brooklyn Bridge (1915) is broken into overlapping, angular planes, emphasizing structure rather than literal representation. Gleizes' circular rhythms give witness to this icon of American architecture through a Cubist lens. 

Also from this period, his Composition for 'Jazz' (1915), depicting musical themes rendered in geometric patterns, reflects his belief in the continuity of both painting and modern music.

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956)

One of Cubism’s first theorists (alongside Albert Gleizes), Jean Metzinger (1883–1956), was among the first to develop "Crystal Cubism," which bridged pre-war modernism with the neoclassical tendencies of post-war European art. 

His early work, Tea Time (1911), condenses multiple perspectives of a woman seated at a table, as though the artist and viewer both were in movement around her. 

Later, The Blue Bird (1912–13) would push this pictorial method to wonderful new extremes. Still employing the concept of simultaneous perspectives, L'Oiseau bleu is considered exemplary of "Crystal Cubism."

Dancer in a Café (1912) combines movement with geometric structure. The jerky staccato motion suggested by the figure in Dancer in a Café (1912) reflects the Italian Futurists' influence. 

Metzinger's Le Cycliste (1912) offers another amalgamation of Cubist and Futurist ideas. A dynamic representation of modern life and movement, Le cycliste expresses the feeling of speed embedded in modern life. 

Woman with a Fan (1913) portrays a fashionable woman, and the placement of light and the unconventional use of chiaroscuro showcase Metzinger’s systematic approach to form. 

His Soldier at a Game of Chess (1914), not referring to war horrors, features complex spatial relationships and symbolism that continued his systematic approach to form, space, and geometric relationships.

Lastly, The Yellow Feather (1916), rendered with geometric precision, redoubles the fragmented planar shifts decoratively drawn around a woman's visage. 

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941)

Along with his wife Sonia Delaunay, Frantisek Kupka, and others, Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) pioneered Orphism, which pushed Cubism towards incorporating chatoyant color. Through his contact with Der Blaue Reiter group in Germany, Delaunay significantly influenced art internationally, helping spread modernist ideas throughout Europe.

In his Eiffel Tower series (1909–1912), Delaunay used the Eiffel Tower to demonstrate the range of fragmentation ideas introduced by Cubism. In these early works, he transmogrified the iconic modern structure into fragments that seem to dissolve into the surrounding city.

Simultaneous Disk (1912) launched Delaunay’s explorations of color relationships via geometric form—allowing the viewer to take in the work as expressive of motion. 

His Windows series (1912–1914) continued this research, using glass panes as metaphors for a transition from internal to external states. Derived from views through windows, the striking complexity of color evident in these works has been linked to the literary experiments of Symbolist poets.  

Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon (1913) is an exemplary work of Orphic Cubism, where music synesthetically fuses with vibrant colors. 

More quotidian, Delaunay’s The Cardiff Team (1913), also painted during this period, depicts a scene representing a rugby match. The vibrant palette, typical of Orphic Cubism, captures the energy and movement of the players through rhythmic, circular forms. 

Later in his career, Circular Forms (1930) charted modulations of light streaming through stained-glass windows. The resulting, almost architectural forms showcased Delaunay’s continued exploration of Cubist ideas. 

His Rhythm, Joy of Life (1930), which also featured his trademark disk motifs, highlighted his understanding of color theory. 

How Will You Continue the Legacy of Cubist Art?

Cubism stands as one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century, shattering traditional perspectives and forever changing how we understand visual representation. From its beginnings with Picasso and Braque to its evolution through analytical and synthetic phases, Cubism challenged artists and viewers alike to see beyond surface appearances. 

The movement's impact extends far beyond the works of its founders, influencing countless artists and art movements that followed. Whether you're drawn to Picasso's famous paintings, Braque's thoughtful compositions, or Léger's mechanical forms, Cubism invites us to see the world not just as it appears, but as we understand it to exist—from all angles at once. By displaying cubist wall art in your home, you introduce a conversation piece that challenges conventional perspectives, bringing modern art to your living space while connecting your personal environment to one of art history's most revolutionary movements.