Georges Braque

Born in France in 1882 and lived 81 years. He was a friend of the famous artist Pablo Picasso. Both artists tried new forms of mediums of art. Cubism. Other artists made fun of all the little cubes in their pictures, which became knows as Cubism.

Georges Braque He studied serious painting as a teenager. He moved to the big city of Paris at age 18. His first paintings used bright colors and fuzzy, distorted images.

Braque early paintings

Cubism Cubism was influenced by African sculptures. Painting figures were made up geometric shapes such as cubes, spheres, cylinders and cones rather than organic shapes with irregular sides like those found in nature (e.g. trees are cylinders, roads are parallel lines, houses are squares with very little detail). Paintings looked like someone had cut them up and glued them back together.

Cubism Cubists wanted to show all sides of the object in the same picture. Some Cubist paintings are abstract and it’s hard to identify the object.

Cubist paintings The image in this painting, a guitar player, is abstract and hard to identify.

Cubist paintings The face in this painting looks like it was cut up and pasted back together.

Cubist paintings Cubist artists wanted to make the viewer feel like they were walking around a piece of sculpture.

Cubist painting started out with little color.

Cubist paintings got more sophisticated and colorful through time..

Artists started using texture by sticking things to the canvas (newspaper, string, wallpaper, etc.) collage This style of art is called collage.

George Braques “Birds” Years later Braque was on vacation and became fascinated with birds. He created a series of bird paintings.

George Braques “Birds” This painting is an example of abstract rather than cubism.