Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement,
pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque
In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics.


Juan Gris, Portrait of Picasso, 1912, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago