Braque, Georges (1882-1963)

French painter. With Picasso, he played a decisive role in the development of cubism (1907-1910). It was during this period that he began to experiment with collage and invented the technique of gluing paper, wood, and other materials to canvas.

Braque was the first to exhibit a cubist work, at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908. The idea behind cubism led logically to abstraction, a path that Braque pursued without losing a sense of pictorial beauty. In his many still lifes he shows how from some quite simple object, such as a dish of fruit, a whole set of novel relationships and harmonies can be derived. Still active in his last years, he produced a series of studio interiors which are among the finest of his works in their highly original conception of space.

Braque was born in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris. In 1904 he began to study art in Paris and to paint in the Fauve manner, with bright, free colour. He developed an increasingly geometrical style painted with muted colours, and this soon led to the creation of cubism, Braque and Picasso working very closely from 1909 at L'Estaque in the south of France and in Paris.