Braque, Georges

Braque, Georges (zhôrzh bräk), 1882–1963, French painter. He joined the artists involved in developing fauvism in 1905, and at l'Estaque c.1909 he was profoundly influenced by Cézanne. He met Picasso, and the two simultaneously explored form and structure with results that led to the development 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. After World War I, in which he was badly wounded, 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). Braque is represented in leading galleries in Europe and the United States.

Bibliography

See his notebooks (tr. 1971); studies by W. Hofmann (1961), E. B. Mullins (1969), and F. Ponge et al. (tr. 1971).

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Braque, Georges

(born May 13, 1882, Argenteuil, France—died Aug. 31, 1963, Paris) French painter. He studied painting in Le Havre, then in Paris at a private academy and briefly at the École des Beaux-Arts. Though his earliest works were influenced by Impressionism, his first important paintings (1905–07) were in the style of Fauvism pioneered by André Derain and Henri Matisse; in 1907 he exhibited and sold six of these paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. Abandoning Fauvism in 1907, he invented with Pablo Picasso the revolutionary new style known as Cubism. He painted mostly still lifes featuring geometric shapes and low-key colour harmonies. In 1912 he introduced the collage, or papier collé (pasted-paper picture), by attaching three pieces of wallpaper to the drawing Fruit Dish and Glass. By the 1920s he was a prosperous, well-established modern master. In 1923 and 1925 he designed stage sets for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He enjoyed a long and prestigious career; in his later years he was honoured with important exhibitions throughout the world. In 1961 he became the first living artist to have his works exhibited in the Louvre.

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Braque, Georges 

Born May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil; died Aug. 31, 1963, in Paris. French artist; studied in the fine-arts schools of Le Havre and Paris.

Beginning in 1905, Braque painted landscapes in the spirit of fauvism. Beginning in 1908 he came under the influence of P. Cézanne; this made him, along with P. Picasso, a founder of cubism. In almost monochromatic cubist compositions (Still Life of Musical Instruments, 1908; Woman With Guitar, 1913—National Museum of Modern Art, Paris), Braque strove for abstraction of form and variety of texture. He included bits of paper and wood in his paintings and added sand to them. After 1917, Braque gradually moved away from cubism and painted flat canvases of more varied color (still life’s, landscapes, and pictures with human figures), in which the line achieved an almost ornamental expressiveness and flexibility. Braque also worked as a graphic artist, sculptor, and theater artist.

REFERENCE

Hauert, R., and A. Verdet. Georges Braque. Geneva, 1956.