Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (French:[mɛtsɛ̃ʒe]; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism.[1][2][3][4] His earliest works, from 1900 to 1904, were influenced by the neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat and Henri-Edmond Cross. Between 1904 and 1907, Metzinger worked in the Divisionist and Fauvist styles with a strong Cézannian component, leading to some of the first proto-Cubist works.
From 1908, Metzinger experimented with the faceting of form, a style that would soon become known as Cubism. His early involvement in Cubism saw him both as an influential artist and an important theorist of the movement. The idea of moving around an object in order to see it from different view-points is treated, for the first time, in Metzinger's Note sur la Peinture, published in 1910.[5] Before the emergence of Cubism, painters worked from the limiting factor of a single view-point. Metzinger, for the first time, in Note sur la peinture, enunciated the interest in representing objects as remembered from successive and subjective experiences within the context of both space and time. Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes wrote the first major treatise on Cubism in 1912, entitled Du "Cubisme". Metzinger was a founding member of the Section d'Or group of artists.
Metzinger was at the center of Cubism both because of his participation and identification of the movement when it first emerged, because of his role as intermediary among the Bateau-Lavoir group and the Section d'Or Cubists, and above all because of his artistic personality.[6] During the First World War, Metzinger furthered his role as a leading Cubist with his co-founding of the second phase of the movement, referred to as Crystal Cubism. He recognized the importance of mathematics in art, through a radical geometrization of form as an underlying architectural basis for his wartime compositions. The establishing of the basis of this new perspective, and the principles upon which an essentially non-representational art could be built, led to La Peinture et ses lois (Painting and its Laws), written by Albert Gleizes in 1922–23. As post-war reconstruction began, a series of exhibitions at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie de L'Effort Moderne were to highlight order and allegiance to the aesthetically pure. The collective phenomenon of Cubism—now in its advanced revisionist form—became part of a widely discussed development in French culture, with Metzinger at its helm. Crystal Cubism was the culmination of a continuous narrowing of scope in the name of a return to order; based upon the observation of the artist's relation to nature, rather than on the nature of reality itself. In terms of the separation of culture and life, this period emerges as the most important in the history of Modernism.[7]
For Metzinger, the classical vision had been an incomplete representation of real things, based on an incomplete set of laws, postulates and theorems. He believed the world was dynamic and changing in time, appearing different depending on the observer's point of view. Each of these viewpoints were equally valid according to underlying symmetries inherent in nature. For inspiration, Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist and one of the founders of quantum mechanics, hung in his office a large painting by Metzinger, La Femme au Cheval,[8] a conspicuous early example of "mobile perspective" implementation (also called simultaneity).[9]
^André Salmon, La Jeune Peinture française, Histoire anecdotique du cubisme, (Anecdotal History of Cubism), Paris, Albert Messein, 1912, Collection des Trente
^Salmon, André (1968). Anecdotal History of Cubism. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520014503., quoted in Chipp, Herschel Browning; et al. (1968). Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. University of California Press. p. 205. ISBN 0-520-01450-2.
^Salmon, André (2005). André Salmon on French Modern Art. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85658-2.
^Apollinaire, Guillaume (1913). The Cubist Painters. Translated by Peter F. Read (also accompanying commentary) (2004 ed.). University of California Press. ISBN 9780520243545.
^Jean Metzinger, October–November 1910, "Note sur la peinture" Pan: 60
^Daniel Robbins, Jean Metzinger: At the Center of Cubism, 1985, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, p. 22
^Green, Christopher (2009). "Late Cubism". MoMA.com. Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press.
^Abraham Pais, Niels Bohr's Times: In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity, Clarendon Press, 1991, p. 335, ISBN 0198520492
^Miller, A., 2002, Einstein, Picasso: space, time and the beauty that causes havoc, Basic Books, New York, 2001, pp. 166–169, 256–258
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (French: [mɛtsɛ̃ʒe]; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic...
movement was pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and joined by JeanMetzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Juan Gris, and...
those under contract with the art dealer and collector Léonce Rosenberg—JeanMetzinger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Henri Laurens, and Jacques Lipchitz most...
Czobel, Louis Valtat, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, JeanMetzinger, Kees van Dongen, Émilie...
works of Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, JeanMetzinger, Robert Delaunay and Pablo Picasso. In 1907 Metzinger and Delaunay were singled out by the critic...
of Seurat, Signac, and Cross. From 1905 to 1907, Robert Delaunay and JeanMetzinger painted in a Divisionist style with large squares or 'cubes' of color:...
These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required. JeanMetzinger's mosaic-like Divisionist technique had its parallel in literature; a...
confiscated and exhibited works of foreign artists, such as Pablo Picasso, JeanMetzinger, Albert Gleizes, Piet Mondrian, Marc Chagall and Wassily Kandinsky....
generations." Guests at the banquet Rousseau included: Guillaume Apollinaire, JeanMetzinger, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Marie Laurencin, André Salmon, Maurice Raynal...
including the pre-cubists Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, JeanMetzinger and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild"...
Kulturgutverluste. "JeanMetzinger, Im Boot (En Canot), Degenerate Art Database (Beschlagnahme Inventar, Entartete Kunst)" [JeanMetzinger, Im Boot (In Canoe)...
painting created toward the end of 1911, early 1912, by the French artist JeanMetzinger (1883–1956). The work was exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants...
Cubists. At the 1911 Salon des Indépendants Le Fauconnier and colleagues JeanMetzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay caused a scandal...
(1931–2022), American nutritionist JeanMetzinger (1883–1956), French painter Kraig Metzinger (born 1963), US actor Thomas Metzinger (born 1958), German philosopher...
Henri Rousseau. Delaunay formed a close friendship at this time with JeanMetzinger, with whom he shared an exhibition at a gallery run by Berthe Weill...
Pierre Reverdy, Alexandra Exter, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Ossip Zadkine, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp and JeanMetzinger. He became romantically involved...
paisatge) is an early Cubist painting by the French artist and theorist JeanMetzinger. The work was exhibited at the first Cubist manifestation, in Room 41...
Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and JeanMetzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Du "Cubisme", 1912. Gleizes...
1911 at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris (held 21 April – 13 June). JeanMetzinger, Albert Gleizes, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger...
had "simply become an incubus, and [he] was glad to be rid of her." JeanMetzinger's Le goûter (Tea Time) was exhibited at the 1911 Salon d'Automne and...