Artists Georges Braque

Georges Braque

French Painter, Collagist, Draftsman, Printmaker, and Sculptor

Movement: Cubism

Born: May 13, 1882 - Argenteuil, France

Died: August 31, 1963 - Paris, France

Table of contents

> Summary
> Key Ideas
> Artworks
> Biography & Legacy
Influences and Connections
Resources

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Summary of Georges Braque

Georges Braque was at the forefront of the revolutionary art movement of Cubism. Braque's work throughout his life focused on still lifes and means of viewing objects from various perspectives through color, line, and texture. While his collaboration with Pablo Picasso and their Cubist works are best known, Braque had a long painting career that continued well beyond that period.

Key Ideas

Though Braque started out as a member of the Fauves, he began developing a Cubist style after meeting Pablo Picasso. While their paintings shared many similarities in palette, style and subject matter, Braque stated that unlike Picasso, his work was "devoid of iconological commentary," and was concerned purely with pictorial space and composition.

Braque sought balance and harmony in his compositions, especially through papier collés, a pasted paper collage technique that Picasso and Braque invented in 1912. Braque, however, took collage one-step further by gluing cut-up advertisements into his canvases. This foreshadowed modern art movements concerned with critiquing media, such as Pop art.

Braque stenciled letters onto paintings, blended pigments with sand, and copied wood grain and marble to achieve great levels of dimension in his paintings. His depictions of still lifes are so abstract that they border on becoming patterns that express an essence of the objects viewed rather than direct representations.

Georges Braque at his studio (c. 1950)

Although Braque and Picasso were very close for a period, the two art giants were almost polar opposites. Braque stayed married with one woman, fought in World War I, and was reserved and tall.

Georges Braque's childhood, life, career, and various anecdotes

Read Georges Braque's Biography

And, the artists and movements that built upon Georges Braque's art

Read Georges Braque's Artistic Legacy

Important Art by Georges Braque The below artworks are the most important by Georges Braque - that both overview the major creative periods, and highlight the greatest achievements by the artist.
	Houses of l'Estaque (1908) Artwork description & Analysis: Braque's paintings made over the summer of 1908 at l'Estaque are considered the first Cubist paintings. After being rejected by the Salon d'Automne, they were fortunately exhibited that fall at Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler's Paris gallery. These simple landscape paintings showed Braque's determination to break imagery into dissected parts. The brown and green palette here also predicts a palette that Braque employed in many paintings to come. Oil on canvas - Museum of Art, Berne
Artwork Images	Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on the Mantlepiece (1911) Artwork description & Analysis: Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on the Mantlepiece is typical of Braque's subject matter, yet is unique as an early example of collage. In this painting, he stenciled the word "valse" to mean "waltz," in continuation with his interest in musical themes and instruments. "RHU" are first three letters for the French word for rum. Again using an exploded perspective, the viewer barely perceives a scroll in the lower right corner, which could allude to a human head, a violin or cello, or the mantelpiece in the title. Oil on canvas - Tate Collection, London

Artwork Images	Bottle and Fishes (1910-12) Artwork description & Analysis: Braque depicted both bottles and fishes throughout his entire painting career, and these objects stand as markers to differentiate his various styles. Bottle and Fishes is an excellent example of Braque's foray into Analytic Cubism, while he worked closely with Picasso. This painting has the restricted characteristic earth tone palette rendering barely perceptible objects as they disintegrate along a horizontal plane. While there are some diagonal lines, Braque's early paintings tended to work vertically or horizontally. Oil on canvas - Tate London

More Georges Braque Artwork and Analysis:

Fruit on a Table-cloth with a Fruit Dish (1925)

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Artists, Friends, Movements

Influenced by Artist

Artists, Friends, Movements

Interactive chart with Georges Braque's main influences, and the people and ideas that the artist influenced in turn.

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Show influences

Artists

	Paul Cézanne
	Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
	Henri Matisse
	Gustave Courbet
	Édouard Vuillard

Personal Contacts

	Pablo Picasso
	Juan Gris
	André Derain
	Henri Laurens
	Erik Satie

Movements

	Impressionism
	Post-Impressionism
	Fauvism
	African Art
	Expressionism

Influences on Artist

Georges Braque

Years Worked: 1899 - 1962

Influenced by Artist

Artists

	Marsden Hartley
	Arthur Dove
	Wayne Thiebaud
	Peter Doig

Personal Contacts

	Leonide Massine
	Paul Rosenberg
	Ambroise Vollard
	Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler

Movements

	Cubism
	Abstract Expressionism
	Pop Art

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Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 05 Apr 2009. Updated and modified regularly.
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Georges Braque

Summary of Georges Braque

Key Ideas

Important Art by Georges Braque

Houses of l'Estaque (1908)

Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on the Mantlepiece (1911)

Bottle and Fishes (1910-12)

More Georges Braque Artwork and Analysis:

Influences and Connections