introduction
The art movement, Cubism, played an important role in the early 20th century and was a vital stage in art history that followed Fauvism. The word originated from the Paris art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, who reviewed that cubists’ artwork "had been reduced to cubes."
Cubism developed thanks to the French artist, Paul Cezanne, who believed in "nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone." At the same time, exceptional African sculptures were introduced to Western Europe. Cezanne’s idea and the African sculptures were like a sudden fire, which evoked artists to create a different style of art. They sought a fresh method to confirm their unique ideas and different perspectives of the real world, and created artwork that was completely dissimilar to traditional art styles. The artwork, which was full of simplified surfaces, assorted lines and geometric shapes, hit people like a hammer to their heads. Among these artists, the most well-known and representative leaders were the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso, and the French artist, Georges Braque. They invented the modern style which enabled them to rearrange the three-dimensional subjects into the flat images on the surface of the real world object.
©Jiayi Zhou, 2008