A Few of My Favorite Things: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Cubist Art

From left: Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, and Pablo Picasso

In the early 1900s, the Cubist art movement appeared the world stage virtually unannounced and changed our concept of art forever. Where previously a painting or sculpture was about reproducing reality or shades of it as in Impressionism, Cubism sought to deconstruct our perceptions of what we see by depicting people, landscapes and objects using the abstract language of lines and planes, facets and volumes. The goal? To replace stilted attempts at copying nature in favor of spontaneous expressions that arise from seeing, thinking and feeling. In the words of Picasso, “nature is merely a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment… When we discovered Cubism, we didn’t have the aim of discovering Cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.”

The “we” in Picasso’s statement most likely referred to Georges Braque, whom he collaborated with in early Cubist works. What began as an exploratory collaboration between the two men flowered into a pioneering movement whose influence still resonates to this day.

In a major artistic coup, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York now has one of the world’s finest holdings of early Cubist art, thanks to the donation of 78 artworks by the philanthropist and cosmetic tycoon, Leonard A. Lauder. The 78 pieces include drawings, paintings and sculptures by the Who’s Who of the Cubism movement and include 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Fernand Léger and 14 Juan Gris.

Among the highlights of the collection are Picasso’s two studies for his iconic painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, his Three Nudes of 1906, an intimate 1908 landscape by Braque, the elegant Three Women (1920) by Léger and Still Life with Checked Tablecloth (1915) by Juan Gris, a master of disguised images underrepresented in many major museum collections. Scholars say that the Lauder collection is among the world’s greatest and is as good, if not better than renowned Cubist collections in institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pompidou Center in Paris. But more than just a priceless assemblage of Cubist art, the Leonard A. Lauder collection is a product of taste and single-minded focus. Rather than simply buying trophy pieces, Lauder sought to create a comprehensive narrative of Cubism’s development, often choosing works that filled specific gaps in the movement’s historical timeline.