When Georges Braque unveiled his latest works at Galerie Kahnweiler in November 1908, the critic Louis Vauxcelles dismissed them as “bizarreries cubiques” or “cubic oddities”. Although intended as a disparaging remark, this critique inadvertently coined the name for a movement that would soon instigate a far-reaching plastic revolution: Cubism.

This is not to suggest, however, that the ideas underpinning Cubism had not been developing for some time. Picasso’s radical Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, begun in 1906, had already marked a decisive break from traditional representation; yet only now could such works be recognised within a newly defined artistic framework.

Cubism. Many Angles, One Vision traces the movement’s evolution from its origins to its later reinventions, examining how the notion of the ‘angle’ shaped both the structure of its works and the diverse perspectives of its artists. The exhibition opens with a pre-Cubist work by Roger de La Fresnaye, before moving through Cézanne’s enduring influence on the treatment of geometric forms; the precision of Analytical and Synthetic Cubism; and Auguste Herbin’s bold introduction of colour.

The exhibition also celebrates the movement’s remarkable elasticity: Léopold Survage and Amédée Ozenfant bridging towards Orphism, Gino Severini drawing on Cubism as a vehicle to return to his personal motifs, and later artists such as Robert Marc and Georges Terzian renewing its structural foundations with a fresh lyricism.

Though varied in approach, these artists shared a common conviction. Echoing Jacques Lipchitz’s assertion that Cubism is not a formula but a way of seeing, Cubism. Many Angles, One Vision demonstrates that the movement’s lasting strength lies in its capacity to reimagine the world from more than one point of view.