The 24th Salon des Independants opened in Paris on March 20, 1908, running through May 2. Held under Paul Signac's presidency, it was vast even by Indépendants standards, with more than 1,300 artists and thousands of works. Its art-historical importance lies less in a single canonical hanging than in the critical vocabulary it provoked: Guillaume Apollinaire singled out a painting by Georges Braque for originality, while Louis Vauxcelles, writing on the opening date, described the most radical contributors as 'barbarous schematizers' seeking an abstract art. The show sits at a turning point between Fauvism, Cézannist structure, and proto-Cubism, when artists including Braque, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier, and Robert Delaunay were pushing modern painting toward geometric simplification.
It helped prepare the language and public reception that would soon crystallize around Cubism.
