Going hand-in-hand with the name Cubism is Picasso. He, along with Georges Braque, his studio-mate at the time, invented it. He explored it, illuminated it, twisted it, turned it, and exploited it. Not too many people know, however, that there were actually two phases to Cubism. To start, there was Analytic Cubism in which figures, still-lifes, even portraits were probed for their deepest meanings, shapes, and plains. Colours were subdued, and content matter, while never completely obliterated, became secondary to the overall scheme of things.
Springing from that however came Synthetic Cubism. Picasso explained it as having taken things apart in Analytic Cubism, he now sought to put them back together again. His Three Musicians paintings were perhaps the highlight of this endeavour. With this development came collage (another Picasso invention) and what we would today call "mixed media", the combining of radically different materials (some traditional, some not so much so) into a single work of art. Starting first with newsprint and wallpaper, Picasso moved into wood, metal, found objects, etc, gradually breaking down the very barriers between painting and sculpture.
