What Is Cubism? A 3-Minute Guide
2026-06-25
Cubism (c. 1907–1920s) is the movement that broke five centuries of perspective. Picasso and Georges Braque asked: why paint a guitar from one angle when you can show all of them at once?
The core idea
Instead of copying what the eye sees from a single point, Cubists analysed objects into geometric facets and reassembled them on the flat canvas — front, side and top views overlapping. A face shows profile and full-face simultaneously.
Two phases
Analytic Cubism (1908–1912): muted browns and greys, objects splintered almost to abstraction. Synthetic Cubism (after 1912): brighter, flatter, simpler shapes — and the invention of collage, with real newspaper glued into paintings.
How to spot it in the quiz
Fractured planes, multiple viewpoints, a limited palette, and still-life props: guitars, bottles, pipes, newspapers. If the world looks like it was dropped and glued back wrong — on purpose — it is Cubism.
Cubism opened the door to pure abstraction. See if you can spot it today →