Analytic Cubism

An early phase of Cubism, developed mainly from 1909 to 1912, that breaks subjects into interlocking planes and uses restricted, muted colors.

Faceting: The division of a form into flat, angular surfaces. Faceted surfaces let Cubist painters break objects into overlapping planes.
Pablo Picasso: A Spanish painter, sculptor, and printmaker who co-founded Cubism with Georges Braque. Picasso’s paintings helped establish the phase’s fractured forms and multiple viewpoints.
Fernand Léger: A French painter associated with Cubism and later known for machine-like forms and bold color. Léger developed a distinct Cubist response to the movement’s experiments with form.
Synthetic Cubism: A later phase of Cubism that builds compositions from simplified shapes, signs, and often collage. It replaces much of Analytic Cubism’s dense fragmentation with flatter, more constructed forms.
Papiers collés: A collage technique using pasted paper, developed by Picasso and Braque in 1912. The technique marks a shift from Analytic Cubism toward the constructions of Synthetic Cubism.
Simultaneity: The representation of multiple viewpoints or moments within a single image. Analytic Cubism combines different views of a subject on one canvas.
Georges Braque: A French painter who co-founded Cubism with Pablo Picasso. Braque developed closely parallel experiments with Picasso and helped define Analytic Cubism.
Juan Gris: A Spanish painter who became a leading Cubist artist in Paris. Gris adopted Cubist methods soon after the movement’s early Picasso–Braque phase.
Collage: An art technique that assembles materials such as paper onto a surface. Collage became central to the later Cubist turn away from Analytic Cubism’s painted fragmentation.
Abstract art: Art that does not aim to depict recognizable subjects in a naturalistic manner. Cubist fragmentation helped loosen painting from faithful representation of visible reality.

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The Weeping WomanRelated: Its fragmented treatment of form offers a precedent for the painting’s disjointed face.