Cubism, movement in modern art, especially in painting, invented by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and French artist Georges Braque in 1907 and 1908. Although the look of cubism and the ideas behind it evolved over time, cubism retained certain general characteristics throughout.

Cubist paintings create an ambiguous sense of space through geometric shapes that flatten and simplify form, spatial planes that are broken into fragments, and forms that overlap and penetrate one another.

Art historians generally consider cubism to have been the most influential art movement of the first half of the 20th century.

Art historians generally divide cubism into two phases: analytical cubism (until 1912) and synthetic cubism (which lasted through 1915). Analytical cubism fragments the physical world into intersecting geometric planes and interpenetrating volumes. Synthetic cubism, by contrast, synthesizes (combines) abstract shapes to represent objects in a new way.