Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braquewas a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1906, and the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque’s work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth13 May 1882
CityArgenteuil, France
CountryFrance
Take the birds which you'll have noticed in so many of my recent paintings. I never thought them up, they just materialized of their own accord; they were born on the canvas... it is absurd to read any sort of symbolic significance into them.
There is more sensitivity in technique than in the rest of the picture.
Whatever is in common is true; but likeness is false.
Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.
To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.
Poetry' is what distinguishes the cubist paintings Picasso and I arrived at intuitively from the lifeless sort of painting those who followed us tried, with such unfortunate results, to arrive at theoretically.
It is the limitation of means that determines style, gives rise to new forms and makes creativity possible.
To work from nature is to improvise.
I wanted to create a kind of substance by means of brush-work. But that is the kind of discovery which one makes gradually... Thus it was that I subsequently began to introduce sand, sawdust and metal filings into my pictures.
I do not think my painting has ever been revolutionary. It was not directed against any kind of painting. I have never wanted to prove that I was right and someone else wrong...
Illusions... are simple facts, but they have been created by the mind, by the spirit, and they are one of the justifications of the new spatial configuration.
Colour acts simultaneously with form, but has nothing to do with form.
You put a blob of yellow here, and another at the further edge of the canvas: straight away a rapport is established between them. Colour acts in the way that music does...
Emotion should not be rendered by an excited trembling; it can neither be added on nor be imitated. It is the seed, the work is the flower.