Georges Braque, born in Argenteuil (Seine-et-Oise, currently Val-d'Oise) on May 13, 1882 and died in Paris on August 31, 1963, is a French painter, sculptor and engraver. First engaged in the wake of the Fauves, influenced by Henri Matisse, André Derain and Othon Friesz, he ended up, in the summer of 1906, with the landscapes of l'Estaque with houses in the shape of cubes that Matisse describes as "cubist", particularly typified in the painting Houses at l'Estaque. This simplification is supposed to be at the origin of cubism which remains controversial, according to Olivier Cena. It was by methodically studying the contour lines of Paul Cézanne from 1906 that Braque gradually arrived at compositions which use slight interruptions in the lines, as in Still Life with Pitchers. Then with a series of nudes such as the Standing Nu, and The Grand Nu, he moved, after 1908, towards a break with the classical vision, with the explosion of volumes, a period commonly called cubist, which lasted from 1911 until in 1914. He then used geometric shapes mainly for still life's, introduced stencil letters into his paintings, and invented glued papers. As a true “thinker” of Cubism, he developed the laws of perspective and colour. He also invented paper sculptures in 1912, all of which have disappeared, of which only a photograph of a counter-relief remains. Mobilized for the Great War where he was seriously injured, the painter abandoned geometric shapes for still life's where the objects are in recomposed planes.
