Cubism: 1908-1914

Developed in Paris around 1907, Cubism and the cubist art movement was a radical break from centuries of tradition in which art had maintained a single perspective. The leading artists of the time were Pablo Picasso and George Braque, and through them the movement evolved into separating three-dimensional subjects before analytically reshaping them from several simultaneous viewpoints.

The cubist art movement was viewed as 'a new way of representing the world', and as such it integrated exotic influences like African Art and new theories on the nature of reality (for example, Einstein's Theory of Relativity).

The cubist art movement is generally divided into two phases - the Analytic phase (1907-12), and the Synthetic phase (1913 through to the 1920s). The former demonstrates an original endeavour to illustrate objects as the mind rather than the eye observes them, whilst the latter unfolds a series of works that concentrated on the composition of simpler, reduced forms, in more vivid colours.

Leading practitioners included Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Francis Picabia, Jean Metzinger, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger.