Du "Cubisme"

Du "Cubisme", 1912, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, published by Eugène Figuière Éditeurs (cover)

Du "Cubisme", also written Du Cubisme, or Du « Cubisme » (and in English, On Cubism or Cubism), is a book written in 1912 by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. This was the first major text on Cubism, predating Les Peintres Cubistes by Guillaume Apollinaire (1913). The book is illustrated with black and white photographs of works by Paul Cézanne (1), Gleizes (5), Metzinger (5), Fernand Léger (5), Juan Gris (1), Francis Picabia (2), Marcel Duchamp (2), Pablo Picasso (1), Georges Braque (1), André Derain (1), and Marie Laurencin (2).

The highly influential treatise was published by Eugène Figuière Éditeurs, Collection "Tous les Arts", in Paris in 1912. Prior to publication the book was announced in the Revue d'Europe et d'Amérique, March 1912; for the occasion of the Salon de Indépendants during the spring of 1912 in the Gazette des beaux-arts;[1] and in Paris-Journal, October 26, 1912. It is thought to have appeared in November or early December 1912.[2][3] It was subsequently published in English and Russian in 1913; a translation and analysis in the latter language by the artist, theorist and musician Mikhail Matiushin appeared in the March 1913 issue of Union of the Youth,[4] where the text was quite influential.

A new edition was published in 1947 with an avant-propos by Gleizes and an epilogue by Metzinger. The artists took the occasion to reflect upon the evolution of this avant-garde artistic movement thirty-three years after the appearance of the first publication of Du "Cubism".[5][6][7]

  1. ^ Les Salons de 1912, Gazette des beaux-arts, VII, 4eme Périod, April 1912, p. 360, Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
  2. ^ William Stanley Rubin, Judith Cousins, Picasso and Braque, Pioneering Cubism, Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y., 1989
  3. ^ Peter Brooke, On "Cubism" in context
  4. ^ Du "Cubisme", translation by Mikhail Matiushin, Soyuz Molodezhi, Sbornik, St. Petersburg, No. 3, March 1913. In M. Humphreys, Cubo-Futurism in Russia, 1912-1922: The Transformation of a Painterly Style, 1989
  5. ^ Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du Cubisme, R. Girard & Cie for La Compagnie Française des Arts Graphiques, Paris, 1947
  6. ^ Fondation Albert Gleizes
  7. ^ Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College - Objects, Du Cubisme, 1947