Georges Braques

Georges Braque 1882 Argenteuil - 1963 Paris Georges Braque, one of the most important French artists of the École de Paris of the 20th century, was born in Argenteuil on May 13, 1882. He spent his childhood in Le Havre, where he studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1897 to 1899. Subsequently, in 1901, like his father and grandfather, he made an apprenticeship as a decorative painter. In 1902 Georges Braque went to Paris and attended the Académie Humbert until 1904. He moved in the artistic circles of Paris, lived in Montmartre, was friends with Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia and came into contact with the artists of Fauvism, Henri Matisse and André Derain. During these years, Georges Braque painted light pictures in bright colors inspired by Impressionism and Fauvism. Invention of Cubism together with Pablo Picasso The year 1907 became the key year in Georges Braque's early work. He was able to exhibit his works at the Salon des Indépendants and immediately sold six of the seven oil paintings of landscapes shown. Also in 1907, Georges Braque saw the two posthumous retrospectives of Paul Cézanne, who had died a year earlier, at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and the Grand Palais in Paris. After these visits at the latest, Georges Braque, like numerous other artists who had visited these retrospective tributes to Paul Cézanne, who had been rather misunderstood during his lifetime and elevated to the status of "father of modern painting" after his death, was also impressed and received groundbreaking impulses for his own painting style. And Georges Braque met Pablo Picasso, also in 1907. With the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque visited Picasso's studio and saw the painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (Museum of Modern Art, New York), which had just been completed. In the course of 1908, the two painters began a close collaboration that led to the invention of Cubism. Between 1908 and 1914 they created, partly in parallel, monochromatic paintings with geometric forms as well as collages and papiers collés in the new art style of Cubism. The collaboration ends abruptly with the outbreak of the First World War. Georges Braque was drafted into military service, suffered a serious head injury in 1915, but was able to resume painting in 1917. Contact with Pablo Picasso breaks off completely. In the works he produced from 1917 onwards, Georges Braque moved away from his previous painting style, color returned to his paintings, and in the course of the 1920s and 1930s Braque transferred the Cubist formal language to his mature pictorial works with metamorphic, interpenetrating forms. He chose still life as his main motif. In the repeatedly varied forms of his still lifes, Georges Braque confronts the questions of the representation of space as well as the possible relationships that the depicted objects enter into with one another. With the printer Fernand Mourlot, Georges Braque produced impressive graphic works from 1947. In 1948, Maeght Éditeur published the lithograph suite "Cahier de Georges Braque 1917-1947". Georges Braque's Dance of the Forms In his late work, the stylized bird, which would now unmistakably belong to Georges Braque, increasingly appeared as a motif alongside the still lifes. The motif of the bird becomes the mediator between the still lifes and the late landscapes, which Braque will now paint again, as he did in his early work. In 1933 the Kunsthalle Basel organized the first retrospective for Georges Braque. In 1948 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale. In 1955 the artist took part in the first Documenta in Kassel, where his works were also shown at Documenta II in 1959 and posthumously at Documenta III in 1964. Numerous further exhibitions internationally in the most renowned museums and galleries as well as honors for the important artist of the 20th century were to follow until today. In 2013, the Grand Palais in Paris dedicated an extensive show to him, and in 2014 the Guggenheim in Bilbao showed the work of Georges Braque. Most recently, in 2020/21, the Bucerius Kunstforum in Hamburg is showing the magnificent survey show "Georges Braque - Dance of Forms," conceived together with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, with works from all creative phases, which in its chronological presentation sheds new light on the complete oeuvre of the French master. Georges Braque dies in Paris on August 31, 1963.