Proto-Cubism

Proto-Cubism names the transitional phase - dated 1906 to 1910 - that bridges Post-Impressionism and Fauvism and the birth of Cubism. It was not a movement or a group but a wide-ranging series of experiments in which artists working in France, above all Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, took up Paul Cézanne's late geometrized landscapes and his 1904 advice to 'interpret nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone'. Classical perspective is progressively abandoned; objects are rebuilt as faceted volumes, and colour is reduced from Fauvist brightness to a muted range. Works of these years by Juan Gris, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger point the same way, in France and across Europe. Known from the spring of 1911 as Cubism, the phase is the first exploratory stage of the movement that remade twentieth-century art.

Defining characteristics

• Objects rebuilt as geometric schemas of cubic and conic shapes
• Classical perspective stripped away: form shown constructively, from several sides at once
• Muted, restricted palette set against the bright colour of Fauvism
• Patchwork of overlapping brushstroke planes and shifting contours, after Cézanne
• Jagged, mask-like faces and figures showing Iberian and African sculptural influence

Key figures

• Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) — Late geometrized landscapes and the 1904 'cylinder, sphere, cone' letter that seeded the phase
• Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) — Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and the experiments that opened Cubism
• Georges Braque (1882-1963) — The 1908 L'Estaque landscapes whose 'cubes' gave Cubism its name
• Fernand Léger (1881-1955) — Built a personal proto-Cubism of cylindrical, faceted figures by 1909-10

Example works

• Les Demoiselles d'Avignon — Pablo Picasso (1907)
• Houses at L'Estaque — Georges Braque (1908)

Sources

• Proto-Cubism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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