KunstenaarFrench
Georges Braque
7 actieve items
Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882 in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise, and grew up in Le Havre, where his father and grandfather both worked as house painters and decorators. He trained in their trade while attending evening classes at the local art school, then moved to Paris in 1900 to pursue painting seriously. By 1905 he had aligned himself with the Fauvists, exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants two years later with works marked by intense, non-naturalistic color.
The decisive turn came in 1907 when Braque encountered Picasso and saw his proto-Cubist painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Struck by Cézanne's geometric reduction of form, Braque spent the summer of 1908 in southern France painting a series of radically simplified landscapes, the most discussed of which is "Houses at L'Estaque." The critic Louis Vauxcelles, reviewing these works, used the word "cubes" - and Cubism had its name. For the next several years Braque and Picasso worked in such close parallel that their canvases became almost indistinguishable.
In 1912 Braque invented papier collé - the technique of pasting cut paper directly onto the picture surface - expanding both Cubist vocabulary and the broader tradition of collage. His Cubist work from this period, including "Violin and Pitcher" and "Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on the Mantlepiece," is now held in major museum collections worldwide. He was seriously wounded during the First World War, and when he returned to painting in 1916 his work had grown more personal: richer in texture, warmer in tone, and less concerned with theoretical program.
From the 1920s onward Braque concentrated heavily on still life, a genre he pursued for the rest of his life with remarkable consistency. His later series - the Studio paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, featuring birds suspended mid-canvas - are considered among the most quietly ambitious works of the postwar period. In 1948 he received first prize at the Venice Biennale; in 1937 he had won first prize at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. In 1951 he was awarded the Légion d'Honneur, and in 1961 he became the first living artist to have work exhibited at the Louvre. He died in Paris on 31 August 1963.
On the Nordic auction market, Braque is represented primarily through prints, with 47 items catalogued on Auctionist across houses including Stockholms Auktionsverk, Crafoord Auktioner, Bruun Rasmussen, and Göteborgs Auktionsverk. Top recorded results include a lithograph titled "Birds" sold for 24,000 NOK, "Ciel Gris II" at 7,015 EUR, and the signed lithograph "Vanitas" at 10,697 SEK. Given the global auction record of $15.8 million for a single painting, the Nordic market reflects the accessible print tier of his output.