The Salon des Independants opened in Paris on March 20, 1912, and ran through May 16. The exhibition came one year after the Cubist concentration in Room 41 had shocked the 1911 Salon, and it made the movement look less like a passing scandal than a durable collective program. In the 1912 hanging, Cubists gathered around Room 20, with works by Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Alexander Archipenko, Roger de La Fresnaye, and newcomer Juan Gris. Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase was listed in the catalogue but withdrawn before the exhibition, a revealing sign of the tensions inside the Cubist circle over motion, Futurist influence, and acceptable titles.
The show consolidated Cubism as an international avant-garde force rather than a local Parisian provocation.
