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(b Rampur, 1916; d Lahore, 1975).

Pakistani painter. A seminal figure, Shakir ‛Ali introduced Cubism to Lahore in 1952. His style quickly became fashionable there, was adopted in Karachi and dominated the art scene for more than a decade (see Pakistan, Islamic Republic of §III).

Shakir ‛Ali first studied painting at the Ukil Brothers Studio in Delhi. In 1938, after a year in that city, he joined the J. J. School of Art, Bombay, which promoted the British system of art education—drawing from cast and copying Old Masters. From the school’s director, Charles Gerrard, Shakir learned mural painting and was introduced to Impressionism. He also learned about indigenous art such as that at Ajanta (see Ajanta, §2, (i)) and the modern work of Roy, Jamini and Sher-Gil, Amrita.

After receiving a diploma in fine art from the Slade School of Art, London, Shakir ‛Ali studied with André Lhote in France. Moving to Prague, he joined the School of Industrial Design and studied textile design. From Prague, Shakir went to Lahore, where he was appointed Professor and head of the art department at the Mayo School of Arts. In ...

(Charles Félix)

(b Paris, Jan 22, 1885; d 1961).

French critic and poet. His poetry was influenced by Joachim du Bellay (1522–60), Charles Baudelaire and Auguste Angellier (1848–1911), and the many volumes he published include La Féerie des heures (Paris and Lille, 1902) and L’Appartement des jeunes filles (Paris, 1919). He was briefly associated with the Abbaye de Créteil in 1907–08, and he moved to Paris from Lille in spring 1910, soon coming into contact with the Cubists. He was one of their earliest and most perceptive defenders. In his first article on art, a review of the Salon d’Automne of 1910, he wrote approvingly of the work of Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes and Henri Le Fauconnier as marking the final rout of Impressionism. Allard played a leading role in bringing these and other Cubists together for the first group exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants of 1911 and largely remained a supporter of Salon Cubism. He maintained a broad attitude towards Cubism, seeing it as a return to the balance and composure of classicism, blended with the more modern ideas of Henri Bergson. Initially unaware of the pioneering work of Picasso and Braque, he reacted with hostility in his article ‘Sur quelques peintres’ (...

[Apollinaire de Kostrowitzky, Guillaume Albert Wladimir Alexandre]

(b Rome, Aug 26, 1880; d Paris, Nov 9, 1918).

French poet and writer. He loved to hint at his ‘dark’ origins: he was the illegitimate son of Angélique-Alexandrine Kostrowitzky, an eccentric beauty from a Polish noble family under the protection of the Roman Curia, and Francesco Flugi d’Aspermont, a former officer in the Royal Army of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. When the liaison ended Apollinaire was placed under the wing of the Bishop of Monaco, Monseigneur Theuret, and went through an exciting period of travel and education in Catholic schools on the French Riviera, where his mother had settled. Apollinaire liked to ascribe his genesis to a cardinal or even to Pope Pius IX himself.

While still a schoolboy, Apollinaire took a keen interest in literature and poetry, not only in the work of the Symbolists Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–98) and Paul Verlaine (1844–96) but also in the writings of the Naturalist school. In ...

[Aleksandr ]

(b Kiev, Ukraine, May 30, 1887; d New York, Feb 25, 1964).

Ukrainian sculptor, active in Paris and in the USA. He began studying painting and sculpture at the School of Art in Kiev in 1902 but was forced to leave in 1905 after criticizing the academicism of his instructors. In 1906 he went to Moscow, where, according to the artist, he participated in some group exhibitions (Archipenko, p. 68). In 1908 he established himself in Paris, where he rejected the most favoured contemporary sculptural styles, including the work of Rodin. After only two weeks of formal instruction at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he left to teach himself sculpture by direct study of examples in the Musée du Louvre. By 1910 Archipenko was exhibiting with the Cubists at the Salon des Indépendants, and his work was shown at the Salon d’Automne from 1911 to 1913.

A variety of cultural sources lies behind Archipenko’s work. He remained indebted throughout his career to the spiritual values and visual effects found in the Byzantine culture of his youth and had a strong affinity for ancient Egyptian, Gothic, and primitive art that co-existed with the influence of modernist styles such as Cubism and Futurism....

Term that typically refers to sculpture made through the additive combination of found objects and materials. It was first coined by Jean Dubuffet (1901–85) in reference to his collages, but later was taken up by William Seitz for his important 1961 exhibition The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Though Seitz presented assemblage as any form of artistic or literary juxtaposition, it has subsequently been applied primarily to sculpture.

The practice was developed by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) around 1912, and it became a central component of movements such as Cubism, Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism as well as Neo-Dada, Nouveau Réalisme, Funk art, and other trends during the postwar period. During the early 1960s, the term was often used almost interchangeably with “Junk art” to describe the work of figures such as Arman (1928–2005), John A. Chamberlain (1927–2011...

(b Geneva, Feb 25, 1872; d Lausanne, Jan 1, 1938).

Swiss painter and multimedia artist . From 1890/91 she studied under Hugues Bovy (1841–1903) and Denise Sarkissof at the Ecole d’Art in Geneva. A travel scholarship enabled her to study in Munich for a year. From 1904 until the outbreak of World War I Bailly lived in Paris, where she associated with Cubist artists, including Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Marie Laurencin and Sonia Lewitska (1882–1914). From 1905 to 1926 she exhibited regularly at the Salon d’Automne. From 1906 to 1910 her work was influenced by Fauvism, and from 1910 she became interested in Cubism and Futurism: Equestrian Fantasy with Pink Lady (1913; Zurich, Gal. Strunskaja) is reminiscent of the work of Gino Severini or Franz Marc in its rhythmic movement and planar fragmentation of horses and riders into coloured patterns. Other paintings of this period that are also indebted to these movements include ...

[Fr.: ‘laundry boat’]

Complex of artists’ studios in Paris established in 1889. Planning permission to convert a wooden building at 13, Rue Ravignan in the Montmartre district from a locksmith’s workshop into artists’ studios was sought by its owner on 19 June 1889, and the restoration work was entrusted to the architect Paul Vasseur. The origins of the name are uncertain, but one theory that has been proposed is that it was the writer Max Jacob who chose in this way to refer to the ramshackle and unsteady structure. The first well-known painter to settle there was Maxime Maufra in 1892, but it was the arrival in 1904 of Pablo Picasso, whose reputation was then still unestablished, that brought the place to life. Picasso worked at night, and his studio became a meeting-place not only for artists and writers resident there but for others who lived in the Montparnasse district in the south of Paris, which from ...

(b Velké Lišice, nr Chlumec nad Cidlinou, Jan 22, 1883; d Prague, March 27, 1979).

Czech painter, writer and theorist. In 1902–4 he studied at the Prague School of Applied Art and in 1904–7 at the Academy of Fine Arts. After visiting Dresden, Berlin, Munich and Paris, he returned to Prague and joined Eight, the, which had been set up by his former fellow students; he exhibited at the group’s second show in 1908. His early work was influenced by the ideas of Bohumil Kubišta, with whom he shared a workshop. Although basically an uncomplicated, sensual painter, he attempted to keep well informed about contemporary artistic trends. In 1910–14 he became a fervent devotee of Cubism and, together with Emil Filla, adhered faithfully to the style of Picasso and Braque. He was one of the founders (1911) of the Group of Plastic Artists and contributed theoretical articles to its journal, Umělecký měsíčník. No consistent reconstruction of his paintings before World War I can be made because most of his Cubist works were later destroyed. His process of crystallization in relation to the painting of space culminated in ...

(b Santander, March 6, 1881; d Paris, April 15, 1932).

Spanish painter. She was marked from birth by a physical deformity, which determined her bitter destiny. In 1903 she moved to Madrid to become a painter, studying successively under the painters Emilio Sala (1850–1910), Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor (1875–1960) and Manuel Benedito (1875–1963). She won a grant in 1909 to pursue her studies in Paris, where she attended the Académie Vitti; she was taught by Hermengildo Anglada Camarasa and later by Kees van Dongen, whose example helped free her from the constraints of her academic training in Spain. During this period she came into contact with Cubism, meeting Juan Gris and Jacques Lipchitz, both of whom influenced her later work. Until 1916, however, her work remained academic in spirit, with an emphasis on firm draughtsmanship and sombre tonalities.

On her return to Madrid in 1914, Blanchard participated in Pintores integros, an exhibition organized by the writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna, in which works by Lipchitz and Diego Rivera were also included. After teaching drawing for a short period in Salamanca, in ...

(b Argenteuil-sur-Seine, Seine-et-Oise, May 13, 1882; d Paris, Aug 31, 1963).

French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contribution to the history of art was his role in the development of what became known as Cubism. In this Braque’s work is intertwined with that of his collaborator Pablo Picasso, especially from 1908 to 1912. For a long time it was impossible to distinguish their respective contributions to Cubism, for example in the development of Collage, while Picasso’s fame and notoriety overshadowed the quiet life of Braque.

His family moved in 1890 to Le Havre, where his father had a painting and decorating business. In 1897 Braque entered the municipal art school, where he met and became friendly with Othon Friesz and Raoul Dufy. He joined them in Paris at the turn of the century and, after a year of army service, settled in Montmartre in 1902. He began to visit the Musée du Louvre, where he encountered van Gogh’s work, and that October he began to study at the Académie Humbert, where his fellow students included Francis Picabia and Marie Laurencin. The following year he studied briefly with ...

(b Long Island, VA, March 25, 1881; d New York, Nov 12, 1936).

American painter. He studied in New York under William Merritt Chase (1901) and Robert Henri (1903). In 1903 he went to Paris and was organizer, with Sarah Stein, of Matisse’s school. From 1912 he was closely associated with Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay. He remained in Paris until 1936, when he returned to New York, committing suicide a few months later.

Bruce destroyed much of his own work: only c. 100 of his paintings remain. His oeuvre can be divided into four periods. The first, lasting until c. 1907, reflects the influence of Henri in the bravura brushwork and deep tonalities of such portraits as Littleton Maclurg Wickham (1903; Julia Wickham Porter priv. col., see Agee and Rose, p. 14). In the second period, from 1907 to 1912, Bruce painted a few landscapes and portraits, but predominant in this period are still-lifes in a style reflecting an interest in Cézanne and his study with Matisse. In these works, for example ...

(Davidovich)

(b Chernyanka, Ukraine, March 27, 1887; d Salonika, Greece, 1917).

Ukrainian painter, brother of David Burlyuk. He first studied at the Odessa School of Art and then, in 1903, with Anton Ažbé in Munich. After his return to Russia, he became an active contributor to many of the newly formed exhibition groups there, among them Jack of Diamonds and Union of Youth. He also contributed to exhibitions in Munich and Berlin and was well aware of the latest developments in European painting, although he preferred to appear as an untaught ‘savage’. Mikhail Larionov’s primitivizing portrait of Vladimir, probably from the summer of 1910 (Lyon, Mus. B.-A.), shows him in a peasant shirt, carrying the heavy lifting weights that he brought along to poetry readings and art exhibitions.

Vladimir’s portrait of the poet Benedikt Livshits (1911; New York, Ella Jaffe Freidus priv. col.; see Livshits, p. 49) is organized in Cubist planes, though without fragmentation. However, a slightly later work, ...

(b Hronov, March 23, 1887; d Bergen-Belsen, April 1945).

Czech painter, printmaker and writer. He studied weaving (1901–3) in Vrchlabí and then from 1904 to 1910 decorative painting at the School of Applied Arts in Prague, where he was influenced by the highly decorative art of the Secession. During this period he wrote stories with his brother, the novelist Karel Čapek (1890–1938). In 1910 they went to Paris for nearly a year, where Josef Čapek studied painting at the Académie Colarossi and became a friend of Apollinaire. In 1911 he and his brother co-founded the Cubist-orientated Group of Plastic Artists. Čapek attempted to modify Cubism by introducing elements of Expressionism and Symbolism. His efforts dumbfounded some members of the group, and in 1912 he and various of his friends parted company with it. From 1915 he began to achieve a synthesis of Cubism, Neo-classicism and a personal symbolism (e.g. the Man in the Hat, 1915...

[Shagal, Mark (Zakharovich); Shagal, Moses]

(b Vitebsk [now Viciebsk], Belarus’, July 7, 1887; d Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Alpes-Maritimes, March 28, 1985).

French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, designer, sculptor, ceramicist, and writer of Belarusian birth. A prolific artist, Chagall excelled in the European tradition of subject painting and distinguished himself as an expressive colourist. His work is noted for its consistent use of folkloric imagery and its sweetness of colour, and it is characterized by a style that, although developed in the years before World War I, underwent little progression throughout his long career (see.g. I and the Village, 1911; New York, MOMA). Though he preferred to be known as a Belarusian artist, following his exile from the Soviet Union in 1923 he was recognized as a major figure of the Ecole de Paris, especially in the later 1920s and the 1930s. In his last years he was regarded as a leading artist in stained glass.

Chagall spent his childhood, admirably recorded in his autobiography, in a warm Hassidic family in Vitebsk [now Viciebsk], with frequent visits to his grandfather’s village home. He attended the traditional Jewish school but afterwards succeeded in entering the local Russian high school, where he excelled in geometry and drawing and determined to become an artist. At first he studied locally in the studio of ...

(Vasil’yevich)

(b Valayka Station, Novgorod Province [now Lykoshino, Tver’ region], 1878; d en route from Germany to Paris, Feb 22, 1936).

Russian graphic artist, ceramicist, painter and designer. In 1896 he studied at the School of Drawing at the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and in 1897 at Maria Tenisheva’s art school in St Petersburg, where he worked under Il’ya Repin until 1900. In 1904 he worked in the pottery studio at the Abramtsevo colony. At this period he employed Art Nouveau elements in his work, as in the majolica decorations for the Hotel Metropole, St Petersburg (early 1900s) and the majolica panel St George Triumphant for the Municipal Primary School on Bol’shaya Tsaritsynskaya [now Bol’shaya Pirogovskaya] Street in Moscow (1909). He took up book illustration in 1904 and his graphic talent flourished in the 1910s. His work for Apollon was particularly successful, his illustrations first appearing in its pages in 1911. Chekhonin soon became an original and skilful artist, using a sharp and elastic line interspersed with dots. From ...

(b Písek, Oct 13, 1880; d Karlovy Vary, July 6, 1956).

Czech architect. He studied architecture at the Technical University, Prague, and later at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, under Otto Wagner. In 1911, together with Josef Gočár, Pavel Janák, Vlastislav Hofman (1884–1964) and others, he founded the Group of Plastic Artists, Prague, which sought to develop a more artistic approach to architecture. He subsequently became one of the leading exponents of Czech Cubism in architecture, which concentrated on the sculptural articulation of façades with abstract, prismatic forms. He designed four houses (1911–13; for illustration) below Vyšehrad Hill in Prague with faceted façades that are among the best examples of Czech Cubism. At about the same time, however, he produced drawings for austere, geometric, undecorated façades that anticipated the later development of Czech Purism. Buildings he designed in the Purist style included an office building (1920–21) in Jindřišska Street and a building (1923–5) for the ...

[Fr. coller: ‘to stick, glue’]

Art form and technique, incorporating the use of pre-existing materials or objects attached as part of a two-dimensional surface. Despite occasional usage by earlier artists and wide informal use in popular art, collage is closely associated with 20th-century art, in which it has often served as a correlation with the pace and discontinuity of the modern world. In particular it often made use of the Objet trouvé, while the principle of collage was extended into sculpture in the form of the Assemblage. The first deliberate and innovative use of collage in fine art came in two works by Picasso in the spring of 1912. In The Letter (untraced, see Daix and Rosselet, cat. no. 275) he pasted a real Italian postage stamp on to a depicted letter, while Still-life with Chair-caning (Paris, Mus. Picasso) included printed oil-cloth simulating a chair-caning pattern, the oval canvas surrounded by a ‘frame’ made of a continuous loop of rope. Picasso followed this by affixing a piece of gingerbread (untraced) to the lower part of ...

(b London, Feb 20, 1911; d London, April 1, 1984).

English collector and writer. Born into a wealthy family that had made its fortune in Australia, he studied at the universities of Oxford and Freiburg and at the Sorbonne in Paris. When, in 1932, he resolved to spend one third of his inheritance (approximately £100,000) on art, he decided to amass the best examples of paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger, concentrating on their Cubist works of 1906 to 1914. The high calibre of his collection must be attributed in part to this early and consistent focus of attention. He also collected other works by these four artists as well as works by artists unconnected with Cubism, but his principal energies and resources always reverted to this primary objective. After World War II, for example, he sold off most of his works by Joan Miró and Paul Klee to finance the acquisition of superior pieces within his preferred area, but the core of his ...

[József]

(b Szeged, March 18, 1888; d Paris, May 1, 1971).

French sculptor of Hungarian birth. He studied at the school of Decorative Arts in Budapest from 1904 to 1905. In 1908 he went to Paris and settled in the block of studios La Ruche, where he was a neighbour of Fernand Léger, Alexander Archipenko, Henri Laurens, Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine. He joined the Cubist movement in 1911, and he was included by Marcel Duchamp in the Salon de la Section d’Or in 1912. Only three of his pre-1914 sculptures survive, two Heads (e.g. 1914; Saint-Etienne, Mus. A. & Indust.) and a Clothed Figure (1913; Paris, Pompidou), which show a progression from a style still influenced by Rodin to a blocklike simplification and Cubist faceting. Volunteering for the French Army in 1914, he was unable to make any more sculptures until his return to Paris in 1919, when he acquired French citizenship; his immediate post-war work was much more abstract. After making in ...

Term derived from a reference made to ‘geometric schemas and cubes’ by the critic Louis Vauxcelles in describing paintings exhibited in Paris by Georges Braque in November 1908; it is more generally applied not only to work of this period by Braque and Pablo Picasso but also to a range of art produced in France during the later 1900s, the 1910s and the early 1920s and to variants developed in other countries. Although the term is not specifically applied to a style of architecture except in former Czechoslovakia (see Czech Cubism), architects did share painters’ formal concerns regarding the conventions of representation and the dissolution of three-dimensional form (see §II). Cubism cannot definitively be called either a style, the art of a specific group or even a movement. It embraces widely disparate work; it applies to artists in different milieux; and it produced no agreed manifesto. Yet, despite the difficulties of definition, it has been called the first and the most influential of all movements in 20th-century art....