The Old Town Magick art collection

Cubism Art & Prints

Cubism rethought pictorial space by breaking forms into interrelated planes and questioning a single fixed viewpoint.

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About Cubism Art

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were central to its development in the early twentieth century. Still lifes, musical instruments and figures became settings for experiments with structure, overlapping perspectives and the relationship between an object and its representation. Collage introduced fragments of printed material into these investigations.

Cubism is not simply any artwork with geometric shapes. Its historical context and treatment of space matter. Explore it alongside modern art and other movements that reconsidered how a painted surface could describe the world.

Characteristics

Cubism challenges the expectation that a picture should present a subject from one stable viewpoint. Objects and figures can be broken into interlocking planes, with shallow space and shifting perspectives making their construction visible. Recognisable fragments help the viewer reconstruct a glass, instrument or face without the continuous modelling of conventional illusion.

Analytical Cubist work often uses a restrained range of browns and greys to concentrate attention on structure. Later collage and Synthetic Cubist approaches introduce bolder shapes, lettering and materials taken from everyday life. A newspaper fragment or imitation wood grain can be both a physical surface and a sign within the image. This makes Cubism more than geometric stylisation: it asks how pictures signify and how observation relates to invention. Picasso, Braque and Gris developed distinct approaches, while their experiments influenced painting, sculpture and design. A fragmented composition alone does not establish a Cubist attribution; its historical context remains important.

Notable artists & makers

  • Pablo Picasso — Worked with Braque to transform pictorial structure and later developed varied Cubist idioms.
  • Georges Braque — A central innovator in the analysis of form and the introduction of collage.
  • Juan Gris — Known for lucid arrangements of shape, colour and recognisable signs.

Notable works

Historical examples for context. Where a print is available in our collection, the work links to its product page.

  • Girl with a Mandolin — Pablo Picasso — A figure analysed through a dense organisation of intersecting planes.
  • Breakfast — Juan Gris — A Cubist still life that brings everyday objects into a constructed pictorial order.

Explore Cubism Art in the collection

Historical art prints are modern reproductions. Dates and attributions describe the original artworks.

Explore further works using the page links below.

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    Sources & further reading