My understanding was that it was generally agreed to be related to concurrent mathematical breakthroughs in higher-dimensional space: _"Picasso was particularl

My understanding was that it was generally agreed to be related to concurrent mathematical breakthroughs in higher-dimensional space: _"Picasso was particularly struck by Poincaré's advice on how to view the fourth dimension, which artists considered another spatial dimension. If you could transport yourself into it, you would see every perspective of a scene at once. But how to project these perspectives on to canvas? Poincaré's suggestion in Science and Hypothesis was to do so one at a time, showing each in succession. Picasso disagreed. He wanted to depict them all at once."_ https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/jul/17/henri-poincare-einstein-picasso https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/jul/17/henri-p...