George Braques was born in 1882, already from a very young age he was good with the brush that could retouch a wallpaper or transform a lime wall with a perfect imitation of bricks, all this because, his first occupation, after leaving school at 17 , was to enter the decorator father's workshop, not surprisingly his grandfather was too. He was also able to paint false doors, imitate ceiling beams and frame walls with faux marble columns. It was clear that the little boy already had a great talent.
Once his military service was over, he decided to leave the workshop to devote himself entirely to art, and went to Paris. He began at the Academy, copying works by old masters, but he did it only to learn the technique, because his artistic flair was elsewhere, he loved plans and architecture.
He was also a sportsman, he was very skilled in boxing, swimming, sailing and cycling; and although of a taciturn nature he also played the guitar, the accordion, but above all he sang and danced. In short, it can be said that he was rather restless. In fact, he soon left the Academy to paint in his own way, first sketches and then landscapes with iridescent colors. He wondered how an artist capable of reproducing the grain of wood, he could not do even more, and said "an artist must not limit himself to imitating what he sees, but create something absolutely new".
Shortly thereafter, he met a young painter, a Spaniard who lived in Paris, he was Pablo Picasso. From this meeting was born what we now call modern art.
One day Picasso showed Braque his latest painting, a female nude, a composition of planes and angles that suggested a warehouse full of tools. And at the same time those geometries seem to be the internal scaffolding of his human figures.
Braque and Picasso thus became inseparable friends, for some years it was even difficult to recognize the paintings of one and the other. Their works were compositions of cones, cubes, spheres and cylinders that were balanced in a game of great movement. Explorers intent on paving the way for a new world, absolutely unknown to the artists of the period, little by little they managed to create a geometric art that brought everything back to the fundamental forms.
But this way of interpreting art was not liked, to the point that the Paris Motor Show he rejected the works of Braque, considered revolutionary.
The great war interrupted Braque's career and genius. He was wounded in the leg and abandoned on the field because he was believed dead. Only when he was collected to bury him did they realize that he was still alive, but it was a long story that saw him hospitalized for a long time in various hospitals.
Come back, he was decorated with the War Cross , Legion of Honor, and it was his wife who assisted him, who wanted to help him get back to painting. But Braque's new "manner" was not like before, now everything was less abstract. This new interpretation of his, which however did not renounce the architecture of painting, helped him to enter the market. In 1924 the Autumn Fair who 14 years earlier had rejected his works, invited him to exhibit and Braque made 14 paintings, as many years as he had to wait - and they were all sold. neither he nor she But the hostility towards that type of painting continued, neither he nor Picasso enjoyed great glory and gains.
In 1937, Braque won first prize at theCarnegie International Exposition in Pittsburgh and an American critic observing the painting said: “But is this a picture or a collar grip?”. Braque who was a little further on said: “the artist never argues with his detractors".
At 50 he decided to return to live in Normandy, bought a modest house, furnished it with the minimum necessary and it was also his studio: five or six easels, no models, no photographs, no drawings.
Braque was convinced that nothing needed to be inspired or to guide the painter's eye.
Today we want to imagine him in his studio in a cotton jacket and velvet trousers, with a yellow handkerchief around his neck, almost like an actor playing a painter in a film. He certainly doesn't seem like a revolutionary to us. Yet he was.
Braque and Picasso created a new way of seeing that revolutionized the history of art and not only are their works kept in the greatest museums, but above all there is an infinite interest from art collectors from all over the world: Owning a Braque painting is a kind of treasure hunt, and for the lucky ones it's a big deal.
