Georges Braque: French painter

Georges Braque was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art movement known as Cubism. Georges Braque grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he also studied serious painting in the evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The following year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia. His earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the Fauves in 1905, Braque adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors and loose structures of forms to capture the most intense emotional response. Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint. In May 1907, he successfully exhibited works in the Fauve style in the Salon des Indépendants. Personal life: In 1910, Braque started a relationship with Marcelle Lapre, a professional model who had been introduced to him by Picasso.The couple married in 1912. They spent that summer at a house they had rented in the small town of Sorgues in southeastern France. Death: Braque died on August 31, 1963, in his Paris home.(more sources).