Cubism

The son of a house-painter, Goerges Braque was born in 1882 at Argenteuil-sur-Seine, near Paris, France.
He developed his paintings skills very early in life while assisting his father with interior house painting and decoration.

He moved to Paris in 1900 to study, where he was drawn to the work of the Fauve artists such as Matisse, Derain and Dufy as well as the late lanscapes of Cezanne. His primary drawing and painting education took place at the Academie Humbert, where he met Marie Laurencin and Picabia. Through these affiliations and friendships he began to paint landscapes in the Fauve style which was mainly vibrant "out of the tube" colors and broad shapes that implied only a hint of realism in the objects and/or landscapes that the artist would choose to create.

A crucial change in Braque's art came in the fall 1907, when he rediscovered Paul Cézanne at the memorial exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne and the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery
Under the influence of Cezanne, Braque started to use a more restrained pallette of mostly browns, greys amd greens, and more simpliflied imagery. A major turning point is when Braque meets Picasso.In the late work of Cézanne, both Braque and Picasso saw a new geometrization of form and new spatial relationships that were to become the basis of cubism In works such as the monumental Nude (1907-8; Cuttoli Coll., Paris) Braque exemplified the analytical phase of the movement with his keen sense of structure and orderly method of decomposing an object. In 1911 he introduced typographical letters into his canvases and soon began working in collage.It is at this time that Braque and Picasso create the first Cubist images. The close friendship with Picasso lead to the joint creation of analytical and synthetic Cubism and collage. They, together, explored the effects of light and perspective and the technical means painters used to represent these effects. Both artists produced paintings of neutralized color and complex, geometric patterns of facted form and collage. Their concerns were so mutual and their association so intense that in many instances only experts can distinguish Braque's paintings of 1910-12 from those of Picasso. Violin and Pitcher (1910; Kunstmuseum, Basel) is one of the best examples of Braque's analytic cubism. The paintings of this period are all executed in muted greens, grays, ochers, and browns. The objects are fragmented, as though seen from multiple viewpoints. This multiplicity introduced the element of time into vision. These fragments, or cubes, are organized along a grid, thereby creating a compact pictorial structure.

Braque served in WWI from 1914-1916 where he was severely wounded. He would not paint again until 1917 Braque veered away from the angularity of early cubism and developed a more graceful, curvilinear style, predominantly painting still life. His works showed restraint and subtlety both in design and color (e.g., The Table, Pulitzer Coll., St. Louis). During the years between 1917 and 1939 Braque worked as an engraver, sculptor and lithographer but would always return to painting. Braque created many images that he would then have his fiend Heger de Loewenfeld "metamorphose" into sculptures, jewels, art books and tapestries. Their love for precious stones and gold brought these two creative geniuses together in 1961 after a chance meeting. Both fascinated by the "Metamorphosis" , the idea of changing a two dimensional image into a three dimensional object, chose to collaborate their talents and create more than 100 jewels. These 100 jewels were exhibited at the Apollon Gallery at the Louvre in March of 1963. The exhbition ended on May 13, the day of Braques 81st birthday. He died that same year.
Braque was the first artist whose work was shown at the Louvre during his lifetime. Braque is represented in leading galleries in Europe and the United States ...

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