Exploring Figuration

Led by Picasso and Braque, the Cubist movement created an entirely new visual language. They rejected traditional rules of perspective and conventions for the representation of form, instead creating multiple planes of vision within a single artwork.

Louis Vauxcelles, a contemporary critic known for having given Fauvism its name, described the work of Braque in the 1909 Salon des Indépendants as “bizarreries cubiques”, or ‘cubic oddities’, thence titling the movement.

Cubism soon caught the imagination of many Modernists. Marcoussis and Archipenko joined the larger Cubist circle of La Section d’Or alongside Leger, Delaunay and Laurencin, with their work and subsequent Salons bringing Synthetic Cubism to the attention of a wider audience.

These artists demonstrated how the figure could be reimagined formally and conceptually, subverting the traditional subject matter such as the nude. This innovative approach paved the way for a plethora of reinterpretations of the human form. Cubism influenced artists for generations to come to experiment with the possibilities of line, volume and vision.

Following the Cubists, a number of sculptors sought individualised perceptions of the figure. Henry Moore, in an approach called ‘direct carving’, worked by hand to mould his materials to his own personal visual language. Influenced by Surrealism, Moore’s natural forms morphed into figures with abstracted spaces within. He tried, in his own words, “to become conscious of space in the sculpture”, negative space became a shape in its own right. Moore and his contemporaries later returned to casting in bronze, attracted by the freedom and uniformity that it offered.

Baltasar Lobo took inspiration from Cycladic art to reduce the figure to its most elemental. Largely interpreting the female figure, he used tactile surfaces to create highly sensual works. His application of subtly patinated smooth bronze and Carrara marble all add to the sensation of the surface as skin.