The poetics of the art historian

Abstract

This work constitutes a first advance of study about the work of the writer, art historian, critic and German anarchist Carl Einstein. He proposes an analysis of the methodological theoretical matrix on which he establishes his unique historiographical conception of 20th century art, making focus on the period that goes from the rise of the German expressionist movement to the avant-garde consolidation of cubism. The proposed hypothesis maintains that Einstein finds in Cubism (especially in the works of Picasso, Braque and Gris) not an "object" of investigation but a "method" for his model of critical historicization of twentieth-century art.