Friday, June 27, 2014

Georges Braque Paintings

By Darren Hartley


Georges Braque paintings began developing a Cubist style after Georges met Pablo Picasso although Georges started out as a member of the Fauves. Georges' and Pablo's paintings shared many similarities in palette, style and subject matter. Georges was also often dedicated to quiet periods spent in his studio as opposed to being a personality in the art world.

Georges took papier colles, a pasted paper collage technique that he and Pablo Picasso invented in 1912, one step further, through the gluing of cut-up advertisements into his Georges Braque paintings. This was actually a foreshadowing of modern art movements concerned with critiquing media, including Pop art.

The earliest Georges Braque paintings pursued Fauvist ideas, in coordination with Henri Matisse. In 1906, Georges contributed his colourful Fauvist paintings in his first exhibition held at the Salon de Independants. It was in 1907 that he became extremely affected by a visit to Pablo Picasso's studio.

Understanding Pablo Picasso's goals, Georges aimed to strengthen the constructive elements in his Georges Braque paintings while foregoing of the expressive excesses of Fauvism. It was from his landscape paintings of scenes distilled into basic shapes and colors, that French art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, drew inspiration from, to coin the term Cubism, to describe Georges' work as bizarreries cubiques.

Georges Braque paintings returned to focus on still life, by 1918, when Georges felt he had sufficiently explored the possibilities offered by the papier colles technique. A more limited palette was noticeable in Georges' first post war solo show in 1919. Regardless of this, Georges steadfastly adhered to Cubist rules in his depiction of objects from multi-faceted perspectives in geometrically patterned ways.

In the latter half of the 1930s, Georges Braque paintings consisted of Georges' Vanitas series, where he existentially considered death and suffering. Georges explored ways in which his brushstrokes and paint qualities could enhance his subject matter, as he grew increasingly obsessed with the physicality of his paintings. The objects Georges used in his still life paintings were highly personal, which is perhaps why he left their meanings unrevealed and unexplained.




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