Focus on La danse, Bacchante and explore the Cubes.
At the Salon des Indépendants of 1906 the elected members of the hanging committee included Matisse, Signac and Metzinger. Following the Salon d'Automne of 1905 which marked the beginning of Fauvism, the Salon des Indépendants of 1906 marked the first time all the Fauves would exhibit together. The centerpiece of the exhibition was Matisse's monumental Le Bonheur de Vivre (The Joy of Life). The triangular composition is closely related to Cézanne's Bathers; a series that would soon become a source of inspiration for Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Critics were horrified by the flatness, bright colors, eclectic style and mixed technique of Le Bonheur de Vivre.
Both Robert Delaunay and Jean Metzinger between 1905 and 1907 painted in a Divisionist style with large squares or rectangular planes of color (see also Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape). Writing about the 1906 Salon des Indépendants, the art critic Louis Chassevent set the two apart from other Fauves and Neo-Impressionists. His use of the term "cube" to describe their work would later be taken up by Louis Vauxcelles to baptize Cubism. Chassevent writes: "M. Metzinger is a mosaicist like M. Signac but he brings more precision to the cutting of his cubes of color which appear to have been fabricate by machine [...]".The following year, Metzinger and Delaunay, with whom he shared an exhibition at Berthe Weill's gallery in 1907, were singled out by Louis Vauxcelles as Divisionists who used large, mosaic-like 'cubes' to construct small but highly symbolic compositions.One and a half years later, November 1908, Vauxcelles, in his brief review of Georges Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler's gallery, called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes.
Two Nudes Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape Georges Braque Louis Vauxcelles Fauvism right Le Bonheur de Vivre Cubism Salon d'Automne Fauve Kahnweiler Robert Delaunay Berthe Weill Les Demoiselles d'Avignon Jean Metzinger Divisionist Picasso Salon des Indépendants