Albert Gleizes grew up in Courbevoie (a suburb of Paris), received training as a technical draftsman, and worked from 1889 as a design drafter in his father's factory in the Sentier district of Paris. He was a cousin of the French painter Léon Comerre. From 1902 to 1905, he served in the military in Abbeville, and it was during this period that he began painting. Gleizes was particularly impressed by the work of Henri Le Fauconnier. He met painters Fernand Léger, Jean Metzinger, and Robert Delaunay at Le Fauconnier's studio in Paris. In 1911, he met Pablo Picasso and was immediately drawn to Cubism. The Cubists exhibited together at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris that same year, causing a scandal. Gleizes and Metzinger became the theorists of Cubism, and together they published "Du Cubisme" in 1912. They exhibited together again at the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912. In 1914, Gleizes was mobilized and assigned to a unit tasked with providing cultural entertainment to the troops.
