Metzinger, Jean

Jean Metzinger was an artist and prominent member of the French avant-garde. Metzinger was best known for Cubist paintings such as Le goûter (Tea Time) (1911), which combined the Divisionist brushstrokes of Georges Seurat with modeled forms and multiple angles. “The visible world only becomes the real world by the operation of thought,” the artist once said. Born on June 24, 1883 in Nantes, France, he moved to Paris at the age of 20 to pursue a career in art. During this time, Metzinger met Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, whose work had a profound impact on his own. In 1911, Metzinger along with Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger participated in the first formally organized exhibition of Cubist painting. An important theorist, Metzinger wrote criticism, poetry, and prose that passionately argued against traditional approaches in art and the need for portraying multiple perspectives to better understand reality and time in a static picture. He died on November 3, 1956 in Paris, France. Today, the artist’s works are included in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others