His landscape paintings in which scenes were distilled into basic shapes and colors inspired French art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, to coin the term Cubism by describing Braque's work as ' bizarreries cubiques.' During this pre-war, highly-producive time, Braque (with Picasso) made large contributions to modern art, particularly through their exploration of Cubism - through the so-called Analytic and Synthetic phases of the movement.īraque and Picasso worked in synchronicity until Braque's return from war in 1914. Once he understood Picasso's goals, Braque aimed to strengthen 'the constructive elements in his works while foregoing the expressive excesses of Fauvism'. The drastic change in Braque's painting style can be directly attributed to Picasso.

'We would get together every single day,' Braque said, 'to discuss and assay the ideas that were forming, as well as to compare our respective works'. After this encounter, the two artists forged an intimate friendship and artistic camaraderie. However, he was extremely affected by a visit to Pablo Picasso's studio in 1907, to see Picasso's breakthrough work - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. He contributed his colorful Fauvist paintings to his first exhibition at the Salon des Independants in 1906. From 1902-1905, after giving up work as a decorator to pursue painting full-time he pursued Fauvist ideas and coordinated with Henri Matisse. His depictions of still lifes are so abstract that they border on becoming patterns that express an essence of the objects viewed rather than direct representations.īraque's earliest paintings were made in the Fauvist style. Braque stenciled letters onto paintings, blended pigments with sand, and copied wood grain and marble to achieve great levels of dimension in his paintings.This foreshadowed modern art movements concerned with critiquing media, such as Pop art. Braque, however, took collage one step further by gluing cut-up advertisements into his canvases. Braque sought balance and harmony in his compositions, especially through papier collés, a pasted paper collage technique that Picasso and Braque invented in 1912.

While their paintings shared many similarities in palette, style and subject matter, Braque stated that unlike Picasso, his work was 'devoid of iconological commentary,' and was concerned purely with pictorial space and composition.

Though Braque started out as a member of the Fauves, he began developing a Cubist style after meeting Pablo Picasso.

Simple cubism art