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Albert Gleizes and his school Introduction ALBERT GLEIZES (1881-1953 was, by a very large margin, the most substantial theorist of Cubism.
Cubism marks essentially the moment at which the perspective system which had underpinned nearly all painting since the Renaissance was broken. The question was posed whether this would result simply in an unlimited freedom of subjective expression; or whether there was a more solid, positive base to the movement from which new principles, equal in strength and solidity to those of the Renaissance, could be developed.
Gleizes argued that Cubism had philosophical, historical, practical and, ultimately, theological implications which could only be understood and developed over a long period of time. He saw the Cubism of the period before the First World War as the first impulse given to a movement that was far from completed by the time of his death. His own late pictures are very different in appearance from the early ones, but they are linked together as the logical clarification and development of a single initiating idea.
(Except where otherwise stated all texts and translations on this site are by the site-editor, Peter Brooke. Peter Brooke may be contacted here)