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Art & Art History vocabulary · Movements & Periods

Cubism

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

/ˈkjuːbɪzəm/nounCore term

In art & art history, Cubism means: An art movement started around 1907 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which broke objects into geometric shapes and showed them from several viewpoints at once.

In Turkish: Kübizm

How it is used

Art historians divide it into Analytical Cubism, with muted colours and fragmented forms, and Synthetic Cubism, with collage and brighter colours. The artists are Cubists and their work is Cubist. It deeply influenced later abstract art and design.

Example sentences

  1. In this Cubist portrait, we see the face from the front and the side at the same time.

  2. Cubism changed the way artists thought about space on a flat surface.

Common collocations

  • Analytical Cubism
  • Synthetic Cubism
  • Cubist painting
  • early Cubism
  • abstract artArt that does not try to show people, objects or places realistically and uses shapes, colours, lines and marks to create its effect instead.
  • modern artArt made roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, when artists broke with academic traditions and experimented with new styles, subjects and materials.
  • avant-gardeArtists, works or ideas that are new and experimental and challenge accepted rules; the word is French for the front part of an army.
  • art movementA group of artists who share similar ideas, aims or styles during a particular period, and the art they produce, such as Impressionism or Cubism.

More terms: Movements & Periods

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