Georges Braque Biography
Georges Braque was born in 1882 in Argenteuil-sur-Seine.
His father, a mural decorator, encouraged him to attend the Academy of Fine Arts, first in Le Havre and then in Paris. In this city, Braque had the opportunity to admire the wooden sculptures from Africa, the masks and totems (then preserved in the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadero). These objects made him understand that art does not necessarily need to faithfully represent the forms of reality, but rather must capture a fragment of reality and convey the emotion felt by the artist in the representation.
The real turning point of his career was the meeting with Picasso in 1907. Both carefully studied the technique of another great artist, Paul Cézanne, who revolutionized the world of art by representing nature and objects as geometric figures to be broken down and recomposed. Under the inspiration of African art and the geometry of Cézanne, Braque and Picasso created Cubism.
Braque's Cubist works do not follow the conventional rules of art: they are not represented in perspective, there is no distinction between background and foreground, the shapes are flattened and the colors are brown and grey. For Braque, the artist must represent the scene as a whole, showing that things have more than two dimensions and interact with each other.
Braque created a series of memorable works between 1909 and 1914. The objects are all broken down into geometric blocks and viewed from different angles simultaneously. Even the most banal objects acquire new light and the final effect is harmonious despite the disorientation that can be noticed. As time passed, its representation became increasingly complex, even including letters and words on the canvas. The artist always used shades of ocher, brown and gray.
Georges Braque died in Paris in 1963, after a life full of success and recognition.
