Key Works
The Tragedy 1903, THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
Tumblers (Mother and Son) 1905, STAATSGALERIE, STUTTGART, GERMANY
Self-Portrait 1907, NARODNI GALLERY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Women Running on the Beach 1922, MUSÉE PICASSO, PARIS, FRANCE
Guernica 1937, MUSEO REINA SOFIA, MADRID, SPAIN
Weeping Woman 1973, TATE GALLERY, LONDON, UK
BRAQUE
1882–1963 • FAUVISM, CUBISM, SURREALISM
Candlestick and Playing Cards on a Table
1910 OIL ON CANVAS
65.1 × 54.3 CM (25 × 21 IN)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, US
In subdued tones, and from different viewpoints, thick, dark structural lines contrast with a lighter application of paint. This is one of Braque’s first oval compositions. On the corner of a table is the round base of a brass candlestick and on the right are two playing cards—the ace of hearts and the six of diamonds.
Initially interested in painting surface textures on still lifes, and in creating color and form on the surface of images, Georges Braque developed Cubism with Picasso. In the process, he helped to change the course of Western painting. He was one of the first artists to include decorators’ techniques in paintings and introduced the idea of using unexpected materials in fine art.
Braque was born in Argenteuil, France, but grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father. He also took evening classes at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre. After being awarded his decorator’s certificate in 1902, he moved to Paris and studied in various art schools. Three years later, he visited the Salon d’Automne and adopted a freer approach inspired by the Fauves. After viewing Cézanne’s memorial exhibition at the Salon d’Automne in 1907 and then meeting Picasso and seeing Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, he completely changed his style. He began experimenting with structure and perspective, following both Cézanne and Picasso’s experiments.
Within two years, he and Picasso were working closely together, investigating multiple viewpoints, which they felt was an honest way of representing the world on two-dimensional surfaces. Braque and Picasso collaborated on their new approach to painting for more than five years. Braque’s divided and reconstructed his subjects, arranging fragmented parts from varied angles on his canvases, employing low-key color harmonies. Like many others, the name given to their art was coined by a hostile critic. Cubism does not adequately describe the appearance of their work and diminishes the depth of their analysis.
By breaking up images, Braque countered the established traditions of visual illusion and representation. During the early phase of Cubism from 1909 to 1912, Braque’s and Picasso’s work was extremely similar. By 1911, when they painted together in the French Pyrenees, Analytic Cubism, as it came to be known, reached the peak of its expression, with splintered, geometric planes intersecting where objects were depicted from several views at once.
Braque then began to insert words and numbers and to use “trompe l’oeil” (literally, deceives the eye) effects that he had learned when training to be a decorator. In 1912, he and Picasso began to experiment with collage on their canvases, such as snippets cut from newspapers and magazines, and found objects, such as labels, theater tickets and even bits of rope. This use of collage became known as Synthetic Cubism. In both Analytic and Synthetic Cubism, Braque’s palette was deliberately subdued so as not to detract from explorations of structure and perspective. After World War I, Braque no longer worked with Picasso. He had fought with the French army and suffered a head wound. He continued with his Cubist work, curving more lines, adding sand to create textures and softening his palette. The legacy of the Cubist Movement spread quickly throughout Paris and Europe.
Key Works
Viaduct at L’Estaque 1908, MUSÉE NATIONAL D’ART MODERNE, CENTER GEORGES POMPIDOU, PARIS, FRANCE
Violin and Candlestick 1910, SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, US
The Portuguese 1911, KUNSTMUSEUM BASEL, BASEL, SWITZERLAND
Woman with a Guitar 1913, MUSÉE NATIONAL D’ART MODERNE, CENTER GEORGES POMPIDOU, PARIS, FRANCE
Le Jour 1929, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
MODIGLIANI
1884–1920 • EXPRESSIONISM, PRIMITIVISM
Anna Zborowska
1917 OIL ON CANVAS
130.2 × 81.3 CM (51¼ × 32 IN)
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, US
In this portrait of the wife of his patron, contrasting diagonals of her dress and right arm divide the background into three dynamic shapes that produce a shallow, flattened space. Her features are angular, elegant and long, while her graceful curves balance the entire composition.
During a short and tragic life, Amedeo Clemente Modigliani formed his stylized, elongated figures in two and three dimensions through the influence of Cubism and African sculpture.
Born in Livorno, Italy, Modigliani was the fourth child of intellectual Jewish parents. His birth coincided with the collapse of his father’s business. Growing up, he was often ill so his mother taught him at home. At 11 he became ill with pleurisy, and a few years later, he contracted typhoid fever. When he recovered, his mother took him to Florence and then enrolled him with the best painting master in Livorno: Guglielmo Micheli (1866–1926).
From the start, Modigliani excelled at painting nudes. Two years later, his studies were once again interrupted by an attack of pleurisy and then tuberculosis, from which he never entirely recovered. After his convalescence, his mother took him to Naples, Capri, Rome and Amalfi, and then back north to Florence and Venice, where he was inspired by the work of Botticelli, Titian and Domenico Morelli (1826–1901). In 1906, he moved to Paris and copied in galleries each day. He also became influenced by the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso (who was in his Blue Period), Cézanne and Brancusi, who introduced him to primitive African sculpture. Having been exposed to erudite philosophical literature as a child by his grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced by the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carducci, Comte de Lautréamont and others, and developed the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder. Within a year of arriving in Paris, he had succumbed to alcoholism and drug addiction, and he destroyed nearly all of his early work.
At Brancusi’s suggestion, he devoted himself mainly to stone-carving, but with the outbreak of World War I he could longer obtain materials and by 1915, he had turned exclusively to painting. His work focuses almost entirely on the female form and his style displays his enthusiasm for Brancusi and African sculpture. His faces are flat and elliptical, tilted on long necks and featuring almond-shaped eyes, long noses and small mouths. Yet although these exaggerations occur in all his works, the individuality of each sitter is always recognizable. His palette was deliberately limited in order to emphasize his long, graceful and rhythmic curves. In 1917, the only solo exhibition held during his lifetime was closed by the Parisian police for “indecency.” By the age of 35, he was bitterly ashamed of his poverty and lack of success. He died from tuberculosis, combined with alcohol and drug abuse.