Braque was born May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil-sur-Seine, near Paris; he grew
up there and in the port city of Le Havre. He was a French painter and sculptor,
and with Pablo Picasso one of the inventors of
cubism.
In 1899, following in his father's occupation, he apprenticed himself as
a house painter. By 1902, however, he had settled in Paris to pursue the study
of painting as a fine art; he was deeply impressed by the bold style of works
exhibited in 1905 by the Fauves.
By 1908, however, Braque had shifted his attention to the paintings of Paul
Cezanne. Braque's interest in CŽzanne's strangely distorted forms and unconventional
perspective led him to paint in the manner that came to be called cubist.
In his works of 1908 to 1913 Braque conducted an intense study of the effects
of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent
these effects. He seemed to question most standard artistic conventions. In
his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural
structure to a geometric form approximating a cubeÑor, more precisely, a rectangular
prismÑyet rendered its shading so that its volume seemed to be contradictedÑthat
is, it looked both flat and three-dimensional. In this way Braque called attention
to the very nature of visual illusion and artistic representation.
Picasso, with whom Braque began to work closely
in 1909, had been developing a similar approach to painting. Both artists
produced paintings of neutralized color and complex patterns of faceted form,
now called analytic cubism, in about 1910 to 1912, as demonstrated in Braque's
Violin and Pitcher. Both also began to experiment with collage, a technique
of constructing an image from the materials of everyday lifeÑnewspapers, labels,
pieces of fabric. The fertile collaboration of Braque and Picasso continued
until Braque enlisted in the French army in 1914; he was severely wounded
in World War I (1914-1918) and resumed his artistic career alone in 1917.
After the war, Braque developed a more personal style. He painted many still
lifes during this time, maintaining his emphasis on structure.He continued
to work throughout his life, producing a considerable number of distinguished
paintings, graphics, and sculptures. He died in Paris on August 31, 1963.
