Cubomania

“It is always difficult for me to express myself in a visual language”

CUBOMANIA was a technique used by Romanian Surrealist artist Gherasim Luca after World War Two. Many Surrealist ideas were inspired by the Dada movement which developed earlier - towards the end of World War One. The Dada artist Hanna Höch invented the collage art form in 1916 or thereabouts. This technique involved her cutting out parts from photographs or advertisements and re-gluing in a particular way that caused shock and disturbance within the viewer. Cubomania stems from this initial idea of collage and disruption of expectations. 

Today, Cubomania is not only a fun art form familiar in schools, but  it can free up the mind - it is unpredictable, with elements of surprise.

TO CREATE YOUR CUBOMANIA IMAGE:

• You will need a pencil, a ruler, scissors (or craft-knife – adults only), glue, an image from a newspaper or a magazine, and a sheet of plain paper of similar weight to your image
• Draw up a grid of 4cm squares on the reverse of your chosen image using ruler and pencil – you may need to crop the picture to fit increments of 4cm
• Cut out the squares as exactly as possible. Turn the squares over once you have cut them out so that you only see the reverse in order that your Cubomania is completely random
• Draw up the same sized grid of 4cm squares on the plain paper using pencil and ruler (you can use brown paper, the reverse of wrapping paper or any plain paper, however the plain paper should be the same weight or thickness as the cut squares or it will curl up)
• Glue the back of the squares one at a time and then place and smooth into the pencil squares on the plain paper, one square at a time, using a soft material to smooth out any wrinkles
• HOORAY! you have just created your first Cubomania art piece 

Resources:

You may want to google 'dada' and 'surrealism' for an overview.

Here is an essay on Luca with some images: 
https://medium.com/@TheoKL/theokl-cubomania-b67accea7ba5

A general biography:
https://www.askart.com/artist/Gherasim_Luca/11195107/Gherasim_Luca.aspx