Synthetic cubism – art & design term

Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper 1913 Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 Purchased 1961 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00414
Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass, Guitar and Newspaper 1913 Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 Purchased 1961 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00414

Synthetic cubism is the later phase of cubism, generally considered to have run from about 1912 to 1914, characterised by simpler shapes and brighter colours.

To classify revolutionary experiments made by Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Juan Gris, historians tend to divide cubism into two stages, analytical and synthetic.

Synthetic cubism began when artists began adding textures and patterns to their paintings, experimenting with collage using newspaper prints and paper patterns. Analytical cubism was about breaking the point of view of an object (like a bottle) into a fragmentary image. In contrast, synthetic cubism was about flattening the image and sweeping away the last traces of an allusion to three-dimensional space.

Picasso’s paper collés are an excellent example of synthetic cubism.

Sources

Tate. Synthetic cubism – Art Term. Tate. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/synthetic-cubism.

You may also be interested in

analytic cubism Archives – Encyclopedia of Design

The phrase analytic cubism describes the early period of cubism, commonly considered to range from 1908 to 1912, characterised by a

Rococo – art | design term – Encyclopedia of Design

Rococo is a term used in the visual arts to characterise the light, elegant, and sensuous style that emerged in France in the early 18th century reached its apogee in the 1730s and was gradually replaced in the 1760s by the strict, moralising characteristics of Neoclassicism.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.