Georges Braque

Georges Braque was born in Argenteuil on May 13, 1882. The family moved to Le Havre in 1890, where the young boy had his first encounter with paint and brushes in his father's painting business. He attended lectures at the Le Havre Art Academy starting in 1899, and a short time later he started to work for a decoration painter. Georges Braque went to Paris in 1900, and continued his apprenticeship as a decoration painter while attending drawing classes at the school of Batignolles, followed by studying at the Académie Humbert.

Georges Braque saw works of the Fauves in the Salon d'Automne in 1905, which impressed him so much that he took on their bright colors in his own works. He spent the fall of 1906 painting in L'Estaque, in the footsteps of Paul Cézanne, whose paintings he also admired greatly. Together with the Fauves, he exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants in 1907. He spent the summer and the fall of that year in L'Estaque again. Also in 1907, Braque met Pablo Picasso, having encountered his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. A close friendship between Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso formed, and in their artistic co-operation and especially by closely examining the art of Paul Cézanne, the two develop the Cubist style of painting. They exhibited in the gallery of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in Paris in 1908.

Braque's and Picasso's close co-operation lasted until 1914, and some works from this period of analytic Cubism are hard to clearly ascribe to one artist or the other as their paintings become more and more abstract. The period of synthetic Cubism followed starting in 1912, a period during which Braque makes paper collages, the Papiers collés, which were taken on and developed by Picasso. They integrated other materials such as paper, wood, or sand into their paintings.

Georges Braque served in World War I, suffering a severe head injury followed by a long period of convalescence. He picked up painting again in 1917, making works that he only presented in public after 1923. He became detached from Cubism, his works undergoing permanent changes over the following time.

Besides paintings, Braque also created an extensive graphic oeuvre, starting in 1912, making etchings, also in colors, lithographs and woodcuts. As of 1939, he began to deal intensively with sculpting and pottery.

Georges Braque died in Paris on August 31, 1963.