What is that?

Cubism

Meet the artists who invented a revolutionary new way of looking at the world

What is Cubism?

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque may be the famous artists we think of when we talk about cubism, but they didn't invent the term. In fact, it was the artist Henri Matisse.

He apparently saw some paintings by Georges Braque and described them as being made up of 'little cubes'!

An art critic overheard him and invented the term 'cubism'.

Was Cubism just paintings?

No! Cubism definitely included sculpture too. Picasso was mainly a painter, but he also experimented with making sculptures like the one you can see below, which is a still-life. That means he looked at a selection of objects and tried to capture what they looked like in the sculpture. What objects can you see?

Sculptors like Henri Laurens made sculptures which were thought of as cubist too - like this one.

Henri Laurens
Head of a Young Girl (1920)
Tate

Image released under

License this image

Watch the video about Cubism and then test your knowledge by playing Art Bingo!

You might like

Artwork
Close