Cubism, which sprang from the joint effort of George Braque and Pablo Picasso at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, marked a crucial turning point in the history of Western art. Taking Cézanne as a point of departure, Braque and Picasso created a new relationship between volume and space, a new concordance between the parts — real or recognisable — of objects or people and the abstract space surrounding them. Their aim was, to quote the poet Apollinaire, “to paint new compositions with elements taken not from the reality of vision, but from the reality of knowledge.” Considering the notion of art as a mirror and representation of nature to be a thing of the past, they did away with all the artistic norms that had remained intact since the Renaissance and ushered in a new age of creative freedom that has continued to the present.