cubism

[ kyoo-biz-uhm ]

noun

, (sometimes initial capital letter)

1. a style of painting and sculpture developed in the early 20th century, characterized chiefly by an emphasis on formal structure, the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents, and the organization of the planes of a represented object independently of representational requirements.

cubism

/ ˈkjuːbɪzəm /

noun

1. often capital a French school of painting, collage, relief, and sculpture initiated in 1907 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which amalgamated viewpoints of natural forms into a multifaceted surface of geometrical planes

cubism

1. A movement in modern art that emphasized the geometrical depiction of natural forms ( see geometry ). Pablo Picasso was one of the leading cubists.

Derived Forms

• cuˈbistic, adjective
• ˈcubist, adjectivenoun
• cuˈbistically, adverb

Other Words From

• cubist noun
• cub·istic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of cubism¹

< French cubisme (1908); cube ¹, -ism

Example Sentences

“It’s like being in New York when the Abstract Expressionist movement was happening or in Paris around the turn of the century with the advent of Cubism.”

From Los Angeles Times

Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” Joan Didion’s “White Album,” Roald Dahl’s “The Twits” — Freeman’s drawings of their covers are all the same size, their edges are all a little wonky, their spines are rendered with comic-strip Cubism as stripes on the left.

From New York Times

The wing will also be home to Leonard Lauder’s Cubism gift, received in 2013, Hollein said, as well as the archive of the photographer James Van Der Zee, which it acquired with the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2021, and its Philip Guston collection, received in 2022.

From New York Times

Jagged rows of bayonets may borrow from Cubism’s fractured perspective, but here they chiefly mean clamor and noise.

From New York Times

In his grimy Montmartre apartment, Picasso is doing something similar on canvas: he’s twisted space and time into something he calls cubism.

From Literature