Braque, Georges (redirected from Georges Braque)

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.