French painter, who with Pablo Picasso was one of the founders of cubism. They worked together from 1908 to 1914 and their styles are almost indistinguishable when they were creating analytic cubism, at its height in 1910-1912, with neutral colours and fractured, faceted views of objects. They also did collage, using fragments of newspaper and other found text.

Their vision was in breaking up objects and scenes into their components of light and perspective, often to the point of abstraction. This was an extension of Cézanne's geometric analysis of landscapes.

Picasso went through many other styles in his career, both before and after his collaboration with Braque, but Braque did not vary so much. Before Picasso he had been strongly influenced by Cézanne and Matisse, and his style always has something of both these about it, without reaching the heights of either. Many of his works were still lifes.

Born at Argenteuil near Paris on 13 May 1882, son of a house painter, he served in the First World War, and was badly wounded. After his return he did not resume his partnership with Picasso, but moved to Normandy and painted a respectable and uncontroversial form of modern art. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur and in 1956 an honorary doctorate from Oxford. He died in Paris on 31 August 1963.

For the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev he did scenery for two works, Les Fâcheux and Zéphyr et Flore.

See www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Braque.html for an overview of his works and styles on the one page, and for more images in more detail browse Mark Harden's Artchive at www.artchive.com/artchive/B/braque.html

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