georges braque // biography (1882-1963) / gallery / prints

{ B i o g . }

L e n i n i m p o r t s . c o m

G e o r g e s B r a q u e

Known as: French painter and sculptor

Most famous for: Inventors of cubism (with Picasso)

Born: May 13, 1882, Argenteuil-sur-Seine, France

Date of death: August 31, 1963

Georges Braque learned to paint as an apprentice in his family firm of decorators, which gave him a good grasp of technique. He was at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Le Harve and, later, in Paris, but preferred to work on his own.

He was friendly with Dufy and Friesz (both were from Le Harve) and by 1906 was in the Fauve circle; by 1909 he knew Picasso well, and with him had started to work out the basis of a new approach to painting which developed into Cubism. By the outbreak of war in 1914 this close collaboration was at an end. Braque was called up immediately, was severely wounded in 1915, and was unable to resume painting until 1917, when he tried to pick up Synthetic Cubism where he had left off. Picasso, meanwhile, as a Spaniard not liable for military service, had gone his own way.

By 1920/21 Braque had evolved a less arbitary spatial composition and an acknowledgement of the real world which led to the ample and vigorous still-life and figure compositions, with a complete balance and harmony between colour and design, which he continued to develop for the rest of his life.

In 1952-3 he was commissioned to paint three ceilings in the Etruscan Room of the Louvre. He also executed a certain amount of sculpture, incised plaster plaques, and plaster reliefs. There is a small body of graphic work - between forty and fifty lithographs, some woodcut book-illustrations, and some etchings for which the drawings were originally produced in 1931 as illustrations for Hesiod's Theogony.

His works are in many French museums...Biog. II

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