Synthetic Cubism

Synthetic Cubism (1912-1914). Words and numbers appear in Braque's Portuguese (1911), which opened a new path that led to the second period of cubism, synthetic cubism (1912-1914). Braque, who had been the first to use calligraphy, and who tried more than once to imitate wood or marble, was the one who initiated this last phase of cubism by making papier collés, sticking directly decorated papers in the painting. Picasso and Braque began to incorporate graphic material such as diary pages and wallpapers, a technique known as collage. In 1912 Picasso made his first collage, Still life with straw chair (Picasso Museum, Paris), in which he added paper pulp and rubber to the canvas. The color is richer than in the previous phase, as can be seen in the reds and blues of Botella de Suze (1913, Saint Louis, Missouri, Washington University). These synthetic works are simpler, easier to understand in that they are more figurative, you can clearly see what is intended to be represented. Objects are no longer reduced to volumes and plans exposed in different perspectives until they are unrecognizable, but they are reduced to their essential attributes, to that which characterizes them unequivocally, without which they would not be what they are. Therefore, although reduced to the essential, it is clear at all times what they are. To represent the «type» objects objectively and permanently, and not through the subjectivity of the brush, we resort to what looks like an assembly. The paintings are made up of various everyday materials that were glued or nailed to the fabric, such as strips of upholstery paper, newspaper, sheet music, cards, cigarette boxes or matchboxes. The painting is constructed with different elements, both traditional (oil painting) and new (such as newspaper). The cafes and music inspired these still lifes. Other works of Picasso belonging to this phase of synthetic cubism are The Card Player (1913-14) or Still Life Green (1914). Braque performs at this time The clarinete (1913), the Correo (1913), Aria de Bach (1913-14) or Violeta de Parma (1914). In this period Juan Gris makes a freer and more colorful painting. Emblematic is its Place Ravignan, still life before an open window (1915), where the exterior is represented in the traditional way, with a Renaissance perspective, while the interior forms deconstructed and composed from different points of view with broken planes. For his part, Marcoussis arrives at the top of his creative task with more poetic and personal works such as Musician (1914, National Gallery of Washington, col. Chester Dale) María Blanchard never reached the total decomposition of form but left her manufacture in the form of rich colors. Her famous "Woman with a Fan" (1916, Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum), "Naturaleza muerta" (1917, Telephone Foundation) or "Mujer con guitarra" (1917, Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum) are examples of the intense study that he makes about the anatomy of things, as Ramón Gómez de la Serna pointed out and about the weight of color in his painting. After this stage he returns to the figurative techniques where the influence of the avant-garde is printed. The First World War ended the most creative phase of Cubism. Many of the Cubist painters, being French, were called to fight (Braque, Léger, Metzinger, Gleizes, Villon and Lhote). In the postwar period, only Juan Gris continued working more or less orthodox Cubism, although in a more austere and simple style, in which the objects were reduced to their geometric essence. Marcoussis created a more poetic work. Braque continued working in the same line of synthetic cubism, with glued paper. New painters adopted a cubist language, like María Blanchard. But most of the painters until then Cubists, starting with Picasso himself, were adopting new trends, as happens with Duchamp and Picabia, who created the Dadaism or Mondrian that adhered to abstraction. Cubism, as a pictorial movement, can be terminated by 1919.