Eliyahu Mirlis

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Cubism is an avant-garde movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture in the early 20th century.

Painter Eliyahu Mirlis, whose artworks have been influenced by this movement, indicates that the essence of cubism is that, instead of exhibiting a work from a simple and fixed angle, the artist breaks them down into a multiplicity of facets, so that several different aspects / faces of the theme can be seen simultaneously.

CUBISM

According to Mirlis, this style began in 1906 with two artists: Georges Braque (French) and Pablo Picasso (Spanish).

Both lived in the Montmartre district of Paris, France. They met in 1907, and worked closely together until World War I broke out in 1914.

The term “cubism” was first used by the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles, in 1908. (“bizarre cubiques” = cubes).

Subsequently, as Mirlis further explains, the term was widely used, but the two creators of cubism refrained from using it for a long time.

INFLUENCES

Picasso and Braque were the greatest exponents of this style and great innovators in the search for new ways to express space and form in painting.

As it was shared by Mirlis, they were influenced by Paul Cezanne, artist of African Tribal Art and Iberian sculpture.

FIRST PHASE OF CUBISM

Firstly, Picasso and Braque worked in parallel, between 1906-1909 in the period that we could call pre-cubism. From then on, they started to work side by side to promote their conceptions about what was later called analytical cubism.

“In a style in which the almost monochromatic surfaces, densely populated with incomplete and multi-directional lines, the shapes constantly played against each other,” indicates Eliyahu Mirlis.

SECOND PHASE OF CUBISM

The second phase of Cubism, which begins approximately from 1913, was called synthetic cubism.

These works of art were composed of distinct overlapping parts - often painted or glued to the canvas - and were characterized by much brighter colors.

Eliyahu Mirlis claims that the movement known as Cubism, was born in the artistic community of Montmartre and then expanded greatly, thanks to the influence of artists in Montparnasse, and the promotion of the art dealer Henry Kahnweiler.

It became popular so quickly that by 1910 critics already referred to this style as the “cubist school” of artists influenced by Picasso and Braque.Talented painter Mirlis is one of the contemporanean artists influenced by cubism.

However, many other artists who referred to themselves as "cubists", advanced in very different directions than those of Picasso and Braque, and went through several distinct phases before 1920.