Important Notice

Lot 9

Georges Braque was born on May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil sur Seine and spent his early years in Le Havre, France. He trained as a house painter to take up the family business, but in 1897, also enrolled in evening art classes at the municipal art school there, where he first met artists Othon Friesz and Raoul Dufy. A few years later, in 1900, Braque moved to Paris to apprentice with a decorator, and then, after completing one year of military... Georges Braque was born on May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil sur Seine and spent his early years in Le Havre, France. He trained as a house painter to take up the family business, but in 1897, also enrolled in evening art classes at the municipal art school there, where he first met artists Othon Friesz and Raoul Dufy. A few years later, in 1900, Braque moved to Paris to apprentice with a decorator, and then, after completing one year of military service, he settled in Montmartre in 1903.

Braque was a frequent visitor to the Musée du Louvre in Paris, where he could view and appreciate works like those of Van Gogh. In 1902, he started attending the Académie Humbert, where he studied with artists Francis Picabia and Marie Laurencin, and, the following year, the artist attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but only for a brief period as academic learning was not his main interest.

In 1905, Braque visited the Salon d’Automne where the works of artists like André Derain and Henri Matisse were exhibited, and also spent the summer in Normandy with Spanish sculptor Manolo Hugue and French poet Raynal, who later became one of the greatest defenders of Cubism. Both of these experiences attracted Braque to the tenets of Fauvism, the style of the Fauves or ‘wild beasts’ whose work accentuated emotion through palette and technique rather than realistic depiction.

In 1906, the artist travelled to Antwerp and l’Estaque where he produced many Fauvist works, and, a year later, exhibited his early works in this style for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants. It was also in 1907 that he encountered the work of Paul Cézanne at his first posthumous retrospective in Paris, and met Pablo Picasso and the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.

This was the period when Braque’s paintings underwent a change lighting, palette and perspective, possibly under the influence of Cezanne’s work. Soon, Braque began work closely with Picasso, who was conducting similar experiments in his own studio. The style that Braque and Picasso developed together in Montmartre was known as Cubism, a term coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles when he encountered Braque’s work in 1908.

Depicting object from multiple viewpoints, Cubism was initially dismissed and even reviled by many, but eventually revolutionized the fields of painting and sculpture, and spread to related fields like literature, music and architecture as well. The peculiarity of Cubism was that it managed to preserve pictorial ambiguity through snatches of objects, broken words, double meanings and private associations. Later, when Braque and Picasso painted together in the French Pyrenees, they developed this style beyond its initial ‘analytic’ phase to a ‘synthetic’ phase where materials and subjects became diverse.

In 1908 following a further trip to L’Estaque, Braque’s first group of cubist paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Kahnweiler, following their rejection from the Salon d’Automne. Through the end of 1909 and beginning 1910, Picasso and Braque saw each other on a daily basis in Montmartre. In 1911, Braque began to experiment with different media and genres, including engraving, papier collé and the use of circular canvases. Despite this experimentation, the general austerity of Braque’s work and his persistent interest in a narrow range of subjects established him as the most rigorous developer and exponent of Cubism.

When war broke out in August 1914, Braque was called up for military service, during which he was wounded and temporarily blinded. However, following a two year convalesce during which he became close to the painter Juan Gris, he started painting again. The artist continued to represent still-life paintings in his cubist style, but also began to use texture and richer surfaces. Although his emphasis on structure remained, vivid colours and even the human figure began to reappear in his work.

In 1924, Braque designed the set for a production of the Ballets Russes, and signed a contract with Paul Rosenberg’s Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris which was then one of the most important galleries dedicated to the Cubist movement.

In 1937 Braque was awarded the first prize at the Pittsburgh International, and in 1940, because of the German invasion of Paris, was forced to move, first to Limoges and then to the Pyrenees. However, later that year, he returned to Paris. His works from this period are characterized by stark interiors and somber colours.

Following the war, Braque abandoned the dark tones and experimented with media like colour lithography. In 1948, he won the main painting prize at the Venice Biennale, and in 1953, he was commissioned by Georges Salles to decorate the ceiling of the Henri II room in the Palais du Louvre.

A year later, in 1959, Braque became chronically ill, and subsequently died on August 31, 1963, in Paris. Today, Braque continues to be respected as one of the major exponents of Cubism, and the first artist to introduce different techniques of collage.

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