Louis Vauxcelles was an influential French art critic. He is credited with coining the terms Fauvism

Fauvism

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...

(1905), and Cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

(1908).

Vauxcelles coined the phrase 'les fauves' (translated as 'wild beasts') to describe a circle of painters associated with Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

. As their paintings were exposed in the same room as a classical sculpture, he stated his criticism and disapproval of their works by describing the sculpture as "a Donatello amongst wild beasts" ("Donatello parmi les fauves").

He first used the term cubism or bizarre cubiques in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque

Georges Braque

Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...

. He described it as 'full of little cubes', after which the term quickly gained wide use although the two creators of the new style, Braque and Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, did not initially adopt it.

In 1911 he coined the less well-known term Tubism

Tubism

Tubism is a term coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1911 to describe the style of French artist Fernand Léger. Meant as derision, the term was inspired by Léger's idiosyncratic version of Cubism, in which he emphasized cylindrical shapes...

in describing the style of Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

.