SECTION D'OR

   The Section d'Or also known as Groupe de Puteaux Group, was a collective of painters and critics associated with an offshoot of Cubism known as Orphism. Based in the Paris suburb of Puteaux, they were active from 1912 to around 1914, coming to prominence in the wake of their controversial showing at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1911. 
   The movement began with an exhibition at the Galerie La Boetie in Paris in 1912, which was also accompanied by publication of the treatise Du Cubisme by Metzinger and Gleizes.

JACKUES VILLON
Paris Collection Louis Carré

     The group's title was suggested by Jacques Villon and Marcel, after reading a 1910 translation of Leonardo Da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura by Joséphin Péladan. Péladan attached great mystical significance to the golden section, and other similar geometric configurations. For Villon, this symbolised his belief in order and the significance of mathematical proportion, because it reflected patterns and relationships occuring in nature.
   The group adopted its name to distinguish itself from the narrower definition of Cubism developed earlier by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in the Montmartre quarter of Paris.
   The onset of World War I in 1912 largely ended the group's activities, which had never  been much more than a loose association.


   MAIN REPRESENTATIVES       

WOMAN WITH ANIMALS
by ALBERT GLEIZES

• Guillaume Apollinaire
• Robert Delaunay
• Marcel Duchamp
• Raymond Duchamp-Villon
• Henri le Fauconnier
• Roger de la Fresnaye 
• Albert Gleizes
• Frantisek Kupka
• Fernand Léger
• Andre Lhote
• Louis Marcoussis
• Jacques Villon
• Henry Valensi
• Jean Metzinger
• Francis Picabia
• Maurice Princet
• Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes
• Jeanne Rij-Roussaeu