James Baquet

    It’s truly surprising that Georges Braque (1882-1963) isn’t better known in the English-speaking world. Like many great men, his genius was surpassed by that of even greater men around him. Such was the case with Braque and the better-known Pablo Picasso.

    Although he first studied to be a mere house painter, like his father and grandfather before him, Braque came to be associated with two of the most famous movements of early modern art, before moving on to other styles.

    The first such movement is Fauvism, or “Wildism,” the use of wild strokes and colors to express emotion, associated with Henri Matisse and others.

    The second was Cubism, which Braque pioneered with Picasso and others, including some former “Fauves.” This took objects apart into their basic elements, usually depicting them from several points of view.

    Braque was known to be a quiet, introspective man. After he met the more flamboyant Picasso in the Montmartre section of Paris in 1907, the two began working together, encouraging each other to pursue the limits of the Cubist genre. Though their works were considered virtually indistinguishable for a time, both men ultimately went off in their own directions after Braque joined the French Army in 1914, at the start of World War I.

    One of Braque’s most famous Cubist works, “Houses at l’Estaque,” is also one of his earliest, dating to 1908. It shows houses and trees displayed in unusual, square forms. The critic Louis Vauxcelles described Braque in a negative way as “reducing everything, places and figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes.” This statement led to the name “Cubism,” a designation at first rejected by Braque and Picasso.

    After the war, in which Braque suffered a head injury, he began softening the forms he painted, producing numerous works before his death in 1963, including figure studies and still lifes — works depicting objects arranged together. He is buried at a church in Normandy which contains stained glass windows he himself designed.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. plans, forms

    2. applications of paint with a brush

    3. colored glass creating a picture

    4. simply, implying low status

    5. name

    6. went ahead of

    7. thoughtful, reflective

    8. unable to be told apart

    9. attracting attention through one’s style of talk and behavior

    10. showing