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47 free Cubism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Cubism trivia quiz covers the movement that broke pictures into facets and reassembled them from many viewpoints at once. It begins with the influences, Cézanne's cylinders, spheres and cones and the 1907 retrospective, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the brothel it was named after, and the critic who first sneered at Braque's little cubes. Then it follows Picasso and Braque through their roped-together partnership, the dealer Kahnweiler who kept them out of the Salons, the Analytic and Synthetic phases and the oilcloth collage that started modern collage. The other half is the wider movement: Salle 41 at the 1911 Indépendants, the scandal at the Grand Palais, Gleizes and Metzinger's book, Duchamp's censored nude, the Section d'Or, Apollinaire's Orphism, Léger's tubes, Juan Gris, the Armory Show, Cubist sculpture, Le Corbusier's Purism and the only Cubist buildings ever built, in Prague. There are questions on Guernica and Braque's war wound too. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Picasso and famous paintings quizzes next.
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Q 01In which city did Cubism begin in the early 20th century?
Paris
Cubism began in Paris in the years before the First World War; its painters worked in studios in Montmartre and Montparnasse.
Q 02Which two artists pioneered Cubism in partnership?
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque
Braque later said working with Picasso was "like being roped together on a mountain".
Q 03Whose late works, especially their handling of three-dimensional form, chiefly influenced Cubism?
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne's late landscapes and bathers, shown in a Salon d'Automne retrospective the year after his death, taught the young Cubists to build form from shifting planes.
Q 04Into which three geometric solids did Cézanne want to simplify natural forms?
Cylinders, spheres and cones
Cylinders, spheres and cones were the solids he named in a 1904 letter to Émile Bernard, advising that nature be treated through them; the Cubists took it as a manifesto.
Q 05In which year did Picasso paint Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, often considered the first proto-Cubist work?
1907
Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907 in his Bateau-Lavoir studio; he called it 'my brothel', and the poet André Salmon later gave it the politer title.
Q 06The "Avignon" of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon refers to a street in which city?
Barcelona
The five nudes are prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó, and the painting now hangs at MoMA in New York.
Q 07How many figures appear in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon?
Five
Five nude women fill the canvas; the two on the right have African-mask-like faces, while the two in the middle reflect Iberian sculpture.
Q 08In which year was Les Demoiselles d'Avignon first exhibited publicly, when it was deemed immoral?
1916
André Salmon first showed it publicly at his Salon d'Antin exhibition in July 1916, where visitors denounced the painting as immoral.
Q 09Which critic wrote in 1908 that Braque reduced everything "to cubes", helping name the movement?
Louis Vauxcelles
Louis Vauxcelles, reviewing Braque's November 1908 show in Gil Blas, wrote that he reduced everything to cubes; he had coined 'Fauves' in 1905 and wrote of 'bizarreries cubiques' in 1909.
Q 10Which artist reportedly described Braque's 1908 paintings to a critic as made of 'little cubes'?
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse, on the 1908 Salon d'Automne jury, reportedly dismissed Braque's landscapes as 'little cubes'; the critic Charles Morice relayed the remark and the phrase stuck.
Q 11Braque's 1908 Cubist landscapes were painted at which village near Marseille?
L'Estaque
L'Estaque, a fishing village on the Bay of Marseille, gave Braque the simplified houses and viaduct of his 1908 landscapes, the works a critic mocked as cubes.
Q 12Which writer called Picasso's 1909 Horta de Ebro landscapes the first Cubist paintings?
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein, an early collector of Picasso, wrote in her 1933 Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that his Horta de Ebro landscapes were the first Cubist pictures.
Q 13What is the usual name for Cubism's first phase, roughly 1910 to 1912?
Analytic Cubism
Q 21Which Duchamp painting was censored from the 1912 Salon des Indépendants by his own brothers?
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 was withdrawn after the hanging committee, speaking through his brothers, objected to its title and subject; it was shown that October at the Section d'Or.
Q 22Which 1913 New York exhibition introduced astonished Americans to the European avant-garde?
The Armory Show
The Armory Show, held at the 69th Regiment Armory in February–March 1913, brought over a thousand European and American modern works before a scandalised New York public.
Q 23Which Catalan gallery presented the first declared group exhibition of Cubism worldwide in 1912?
Analytic Cubism, roughly 1910–12, broke objects into faceted planes in near-monochrome browns and greys; the later phase reassembled them with flat shapes and pasted paper.
Q 14Which phase, from about 1912 to 1914, featured simpler shapes, brighter colours and newspaper print?
Synthetic Cubism
Synthetic Cubism, from about 1912, built images up from flat coloured shapes and pasted papers such as newsprint, rather than dissecting objects into facets.
Q 15Which art dealer guaranteed Braque, Picasso and Gris an annual income for exclusive rights to their work?
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler signed exclusive contracts with the painters from 1912 and sold only to a small circle of collectors, letting them experiment in relative privacy.
Q 16What was the room hosting the first Cubist group show at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants called?
Salle 41
Salle 41 at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants was the room where the Salon Cubists, including Léger, Delaunay and Le Fauconnier, first showed together as a group.
Q 17Which Paris landmark did Robert Delaunay depict in a famous Cubist series shown in 1911?
The Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was Robert Delaunay's obsessive subject from 1909; he fractured it into tilting red fragments, and one version hung at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants.
Q 18Which work is credited as the first Cubist collage, made by Picasso in May 1912?
Still Life with Chair Caning
Still Life with Chair Caning pastes a piece of oilcloth printed with a chair-caning pattern onto an oval canvas framed with rope, the first Cubist collage.
Q 19Which technique of gluing pieces of paper such as newspaper and wallpaper did Braque invent?
Papier collé
Papier collé, which Braque began in September 1912 with Fruit Dish and Glass, pastes cut paper such as imitation wood-grain wallpaper directly onto the drawing.
Q 20Cubist works at the 1912 Salon d'Automne caused a political scandal by being shown in which government building?
The Grand Palais
The Grand Palais, a state-owned hall, hosted the 1912 Salon d'Automne; councillor Jean Pierre Philippe Lampué's protest at public money housing Cubists reached the Chamber of Deputies.
Galeries Dalmau
Galeries Dalmau, run by the dealer Josep Dalmau, staged the Exposició d'Art Cubista from 20 April to 10 May 1912, the first group show anywhere billed as Cubist.
Q 24Which two painters wrote Du "Cubisme", the first major treatise on the movement, in 1912?
Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes
Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes published Du Cubisme with Eugène Figuière in late 1912, the first book-length theory of the movement, soon translated into English and Russian.
Q 25Which poet wrote Les Peintres Cubistes (1913)?
Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire, the poet and champion of the avant-garde, published Les Peintres Cubistes: Méditations esthétiques in March 1913, grouping the painters into four Cubist tendencies.
Q 26By what other name is the Cubist collective the Section d'Or known?
The Puteaux Group
The Puteaux Group took its name from the suburb west of the capital where its members gathered on Sundays; their October 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or was the largest Cubist show before 1914.
Q 27Which Section d'Or exhibitor later became a leading figure of New York Dada?
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia showed with the Section d'Or in 1912, then from 1913 in New York worked with Alfred Stieglitz's 291 circle and later edited the Dada review 391.
Q 28Which gallery hosted the Salon de la Section d'Or in October 1912?
Galerie La Boétie
Galerie La Boétie, at 64 bis rue La Boétie, hosted the Salon de la Section d'Or from 10 to 30 October 1912, with more than 200 works by some thirty artists.
Q 29Which colourful abstract offshoot of Cubism was pioneered by Kupka and the Delaunays?
Orphism
Orphism, a term a poet-critic coined in 1912 after the mythical singer Orpheus, relaunched colour during Cubism's monochrome phase and led Kupka and the Delaunays towards pure abstraction.
Q 30Which Spanish Cubist, born José Victoriano González-Pérez in Madrid, took his adopted name in 1905?
Juan Gris
Juan Gris moved from Madrid to the Bateau-Lavoir studios in 1906, earned a living as an illustrator, and showed his first Cubist canvases at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants.