What was the name of the Cubist collective founded in 1911?

The Cubist collective founded in 1911 was called the Section d’Or, or “Golden Section.”

It was also known as the Groupe de Puteaux because many members met at the Duchamp family home in Puteaux, a suburb west of Paris. The group brought together painters, sculptors, poets and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism, including Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Jacques Villon and Marcel Duchamp.

The collective emerged after the controversial 1911 Salon des Indépendants, where a group of Salon Cubists attracted public attention. Its members wanted to distinguish their broader, more mathematical and publicly exhibited version of Cubism from the narrower Picasso-and-Braque circle working in Montmartre.

The name referred to the golden ratio and was suggested by Jacques Villon after he encountered a translation of Leonardo da Vinci’s treatise on painting. The Section d’Or’s most famous event was its October 1912 salon in Paris, which displayed more than 200 works and became a landmark prewar Cubist exhibition. Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter belonged to German Expressionism, not this Cubist collective.