The complex collection of geometric masses in restrained colors exhibited in Room 41 created a scandal from which Cubism spread throughout Paris, France, Europe and the rest of the world.

It was from the preview of the works by Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger at the 1911 Indépendants that the term 'Cubism' can be dated.

The same year, the painting was again revealed to the general public, this time in the United States, at the International Exhibition of Modern Art (The Armory Show), New York, Chicago, and Boston (no.

[1] La Femme aux Phlox is an oil on canvas with dimensions 81.6 x 100.2 cm (32.1 by 39.4 inches) signed and dated 'Alb Gleizes 10'.

Created during the second half of 1910, the painting represents a woman sitting in an interior setting, with a vase of flowers (phloxes) in front and another to her left.

Thus, exterior nature is here brought into a room and the distant vista seen through the window is formally resolved with a corresponding interior shape.

The two works are very close and establish Gleizes' debt to Le Fauconnier for having stimulated his interest to encompas a new and important element, the figure.With its highly limited color palette Gleizes achieved in La Femme aux Phlox a masterful demonstration of monochromism,[3] a relative and paradoxical monochromy,[4] considering the subject matter of a woman with flowers.

Gleizes writes in his Souvenirs: The subject—whether treated sentimentally or adapted to the formula of a gimmick that might be more or less amusing—the originality of a Henner, a Ziem, a Didier-Pouget, even of a Wlaminck—was subordinated to true, essential qualities that correspond to the plastic demands of painting; that certainly was the basis for the state of mind of this first stage in a radical change in the position of the painter, the stage that has, legitimately, the right to the name 'Cubism'.

The Cubist contribution to the salon created a controversy in the French Parliament about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such 'barbaric art'.

Gleizes was a founder of Cubism, and demonstrates the principles of the movement in this monumental painting (over six feet tall) with its projecting planes and fragmented lines.

After some political maneuvering and a forceful 'last minute thrust' ['manoeuvre de dernière heure'] they succeeded in battering their way through the Committee's routine.

Léger his nudes in a landscape in which volumes were treated following the method of differently shaded areas [zones dégradées] used in architecture or in mechanical models.

Myself – two landscapes and two canvasses with people: La Femme au phlox and Homme nu sortant du bain.

[5] What, by contrast, can be established is that from 1911 onwards the term became commonplace and, initially confined as it was to the painters of Room 41, it was afterwards attributed to those who seemed, nearly or at a distance, to approach them, in appearance if not in spirit.

Apollinaire himself was initially reticent about this label and it was not until later, after this opening at the Indépendants, during an exhibition which we held at Brussels, that he accepted definitively on his own and our behalf, the name 'Cubist' by which all sorts of people had designated us in irony.

This monumental series of exhibitions showcased the works of the most radical European artists of their time alongside those of progressive American contemporaries.