Collection: Synthetic Cubism

Synthetic Cubism is the second phase of Cubism, running from 1912 to 1919. The decisive break with the analytic phase came in May 1912, when Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) glued a piece of printed oilcloth imitating chair caning onto Still Life with Chair Caning, the first modernist collage. In September 1912 Georges Braque (1882–1963) followed with Fruit Dish and Glass, the first papier collé, introducing pasted strips of imitation oak wallpaper.

The technique opened painting toward typography, the printed page, and design. Where Analytic Cubism had reduced subjects to a monochrome architecture, the synthetic phase reintroduced bright colour, flat planes, and legible signs assembled from cut paper, sheet music, newsprint, tobacco labels, and stencilled letters. Juan Gris (1887–1927) joined the movement in this phase and became its most rigorous late practitioner, working in clean geometric registers from 1916 onward. Fernand Léger (1881–1955) ran a parallel mechanical-figurative line. The phase closed around 1919, displaced by the postwar return to order and by the rise of Dada and Surrealism.