Georges Braque

Born in France in 1882 into a family of painter-decorators, Georges Braque was introduced to art from a young age. Though Braque initially trained in the family business, he later began studying artistic painting. His earliest works were impressionistic in style, but by 1905 he aligned himself with Fauvism. Through his painting classes, Braque met the likes of Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, with whom he would share ideas and eventually join the Fauve movement. This involvement was, however, short lived. Unimpressed by the strict rules of Fauvism and its reliance on colour, Braque sought to paint in a different manner, one which would prioritise composition, structure and perspective. Through focusing on these elements, Braque came to invent Cubism, a revolutionary movement that would shake up the art world and become the greatest innovation in painting since the discovery of perspective in the Renaissance. Collaborating with Pablo Picasso, Braque worked unceasingly in a continuous and productive friendship that built up momentum around the radical Cubist ideas. These elements that Braque created would remain with the artist for the entirety of his career, and although he moved on from the movement, he continued to embed certain Cubist ideas within his later works.