Sixty works lead us into this second stage of Cubism, created by Braque and Picasso in Paris. The first striking element is how art made its way amidst the sound of bombs. Juan Gris championed a handful of artists who understood painting as a synthetic art, a jigsaw of flat geometric figures where abstraction and figuration live together in perfect harmony.
Such as María Blanchard, the only woman in the group. Critics of the time criticised her pictorial harshness and the excessive sobriety of works that today show the fullness of their intensity. Powerful black lines frame greys, browns, and ochres, with occasional nods to more daring colours. All the paintings have a certain air of family, although they are original and distinct. Because there is not just one single cubism, rather there are as many as there are artists who interpreted it, all so different from each other.