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Georges Braque
Argenteuil-sur-Seine, 1882-Paris, 1963
Together with Picasso, Braque was responsible for one of the most important chapters in the history of modern art: the invention of Cubism.
Braque, following the family tradition, started as a decorative wall painter in Le Havre. In 1900 he moved from Normandy to Paris where he studied for a while at the Académie Humbert, where fellow students included Francis Picabia and Marie Laurencin, and his earliest works were landscapes. He spent the summer of 1906 in Antwerp with Othon Friesz and in the autumn of that year he set out for L'Estaque in the footsteps of Cézanne. There his palette became brighter under the influence of the young Fauve painters with whom he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendents in 1907. That same year, through Apollinaire, he met Picasso and a study of Picasso's work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon changed the course of his art. From then on until 1914, Picasso and Braque worked in close collaboration and established the foundations of the new Cubist pictorial language.
Around 1912, to avoid losing contact with the visible world which Cubism had veered towards, Braque began to paint some areas in trompe l'oeil, imitating marble or wood, drawing on the skills of the painter-decorator which he had learned from his father. Later, he went further in sticking labels onto his compositions, as well as pieces of wallpaper or cuttings from real newspapers. These papier collés became another of the revolutionary innovations introduced into modern art by Braque and Picasso.
Braque was called up in World War I and was wounded in the head like Apollinaire, although unlike his friend he escaped death. Until around 1940 he remained faithful to the Cubist aesthetic although is forms and colouring were greatly softened in comparison to his earlier work.
In his paintings on the theme of Studios, which formed the core of his output in his later years, Braque repeated and reinterpreted his favourite earlier subjects. They represent one of the high points of his career.
GREEN, CH.: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. The European Avant-gardes. Art in France and Western Europe 1904-c.1945. London, 1995.
Mangin, N. s.: Catalogue de l'oeuvre de Georges Braque: peintures, 1916-23, 1924-27, 1928-35, 1936-41, 1942-47, 1948-57. 6 vols., Paris, 1959-1973.
Worms de Romilly, N. and Claude, J.: Braque. Cubism, 1907-1914. Paris, 1982.
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