Determining the 10 most famous Cubist paintings in an objective and scientific way is impossible, because there is no way of knowing how many people have heard of just one cubist painting, let alone all of them – unless of course if you are psychic and you just know the answer (and if you are, please let us know). Kidding aside, we’ve done our best to find out some of the most valuable and world-known paintings in the style of Cubism.
Cubism art was the art of the 20th century; “it radically destroyed traditional illusionism in painting, revolutionized the way we see the world (as Juan Gris said), and paved the way for the pure abstraction that dominated Western art for the next 50 years”. Some of the world’s greatest artists in history were Cubists. If you like reading about painters, and are curious how rich a painter can get, you can check out our list of 6 Richest Painters In The World 2014.
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Cubist founders, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, along with Juan Gris “the third Cubist” are definitely the most famous and the most significant artists of the movement, and that is why we felt that it’s natural for them to dominate the list of 10 most famous Cubist paintings. If we were to measure a painting’s popularity by using Google Trends, our list would begin and end with Pablo Picasso’s paintings with no other authors present on it, so we concluded that this way of ranking is not feasible. For our list, we’ve chosen paintings that we deem are the most important works of the Cubist movement, though measuring importance is a subjective thing, and even the art historians can disagree on the matter, so please forgive us if you are one and you do not agree with our list. It is also necessary to explain that we did not limit our list to the art period of the Cubism, but instead, we used the paintings that are in the style of Cubism.
We feel obliged to mention some notable artists that were part of the Cubist movement, but whose paintings didn’t get into our list: Andre Lhote, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger. PabloPicasso and TheArtStory were the sources that helped us the most in creating this article.
Now, without further ado, let’s discover those Cubist painting that caught the most attention, starting with our number 10.
10. Bottle and Fishes (1910-1912)
Georges Braque loved to paint both bottles and fishes and this painting that belongs to the Analytical Cubism period, contains both of these objects; it is one of his most significant paintings.
9. Portrait of Picasso (1912)
Portrait of Picasso established Juan Gris as respected Cubist after his first exhibition at 1912 Salon des Indépendants. Gris immediately distinguished himself from the Picasso’s and Braque’s style with more systematic geometry and crystalline structure.
