17 Facts About Braque

1.

Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor.

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2.

Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882 in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise.

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3.

Braque grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather.

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4.

Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style.

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5.

In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint.

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6.

Braque conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions.

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7.

At the time, Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cezanne, African masks and Iberian sculpture while Braque was interested mainly in developing Cezanne's ideas of multiple perspectives.

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8.

In May 1915, Braque received a severe head injury in battle at Carency and suffered temporary blindness.

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9.

Braque was trepanned, and required a long period of recuperation.

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10.

Braque developed a more personal style characterized by brilliant color, textured surfaces, and—after his relocation to the Normandy seacoast—the reappearance of the human figure.

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11.

Braque painted many still life subjects during this time, maintaining his emphasis on structure.

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12.

Braque continued to work during the remainder of his life, producing a considerable number of paintings, graphics, and sculptures.

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13.

In 1962 Braque worked with master printmaker Aldo Crommelynck to create his series of etchings and aquatints titled L'Ordre des Oiseaux, which was accompanied by the poet Saint-John Perse's text.

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14.

Braque is buried in the cemetery of the Church of St Valery in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy whose windows he designed.

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15.

Braque's work is in most major museums throughout the world.

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16.

Braque adopted a monochromatic and neutral color palette in the belief that such a palette would emphasize the subject matter.

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17.

In contrast to Picasso, who continuously reinvented his style of painting, producing both representational and cubist images, and incorporating surrealist ideas into his work, Braque continued in the Cubist style, producing luminous, other-worldly still life and figure compositions.

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