Collection: Analytic Cubism

Analytic Cubism is the first phase of Cubism, running from 1909 to 1912, when Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Georges Braque (1882–1963) worked in such close dialogue at the Bateau-Lavoir studios of Montmartre that their canvases of the period are sometimes difficult to attribute. The two reduced still life and figure subjects to a near monochrome architecture of overlapping facets, dismantling the single fixed viewpoint that had governed Western painting since the Renaissance and replacing it with multiple simultaneous angles fused into a single pictorial surface.

The palette was restricted to ochres, browns, greys, and muted greens. Key canvases include Picasso's Girl with a Mandolin (1910), Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1910), and Ma Jolie (1911–12), and Braque's Violin and Candlestick (1910) and The Portuguese (1911). The dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler held exclusive rights to their output and showed almost none of it publicly during the period. From 1912 the introduction of stencilled letters and papier collé marked the transition to Synthetic Cubism.