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Press Release

Georges Braque

Pioneer of Modernism

October 12 - November 30, 2011

Acquavella Galleries is pleased to announce Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism, a retrospective of seminal paintings curated by Dieter Buchhart, from October 12th through November 30th, 2011. The exhibition will include over forty major paintings and papiers collés by the artist, all on loan from prestigious international public and private collections. The exhibition marks the first major Braque retrospective in the United States since
the Guggenheim Museum’s celebrated exhibition in 1988.

Best known as the co-founder of Cubism with Pablo Picasso and as the inventor of the papier collé technique, Georges Braque’s legacy is better understood in the context of his lasting influence on artists for the past century. “The purpose of this retrospective is to present the artist not only as the cocreator of Fauvism and Cubism but also as a profoundly passionate, progressive and influential painter all the years of his life, well beyond his
early triumphs,” explained William Acquavella.

As a young man, Braque was a leading member of the Fauves, together with Henri Matisse, André Dérain, and Maurice de Vlaminck, before being inspired by the structured compositions of Paul Cézanne. This adherence to structure would guide Braque for the remainder of his career, especially during his close six-year collaboration with Picasso.

Together, Braque and Picasso invented a new aesthetic by portraying their subjects from multiple vantage points. They created a new pictorial world in which an object was deconstructed and then reconstructed on the basis of geometric criteria. They used forms that resembled geometric cubes, leading art critic Louis Vauxcelles to assign the name “Cubism” to the new movement. Still lifes became Braque’s preferred vehicle for innovation, and he was celebrated for instilling the most everyday objects with a profound spirituality usually reserved for devotional painting. Braque described his fascination with the genre, “A lemon and an orange side by side cease to be a lemon and an orange and become
fruit. The mathematicians follow this law; so do we.” In addition to fruit, other familiar objects such as tobacco pouches and musical instruments became frequent sources of inspiration.

At seventy-nine, Braque became the first living artist to be accorded a solo exhibition at The Louvre and was awarded state honors at his funeral in 1963. His work is held in the permanent collections of the world’s foremost museums including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Collection, London; The Albertina, Vienna; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; The Art Institute of
Chicago; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Kunsthaus Zurich; The Phillips Collection, Washington DC; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; many of whom have loaned work for the exhibition.

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism will be accompanied by a 200 page hardcover catalogue which will include essays by Dieter Buchhart, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine and Richard Shiff.

For more information please contact Prentice Art Communications, Inc.
(212) 228-4048 or Bettina@PrenticeArt.com

Download Press Release  PDF (247 K)

Selected Press

Time Out New York  Best (and worst) of 2011  December 15-28, 2011   PDF (3.8 MB)
Bloomberg  Radical Braque Painting Boosts Acquavella Galleries Attendance to 16,000  November 22, 2011   PDF (41 K)
artcritical  Development Issues: Georges Braque at Acquavella Galleries  November 10, 2011   PDF (201 K)
The New York Sun  A Lemon and an Orange Side by Side  November 7, 2011   PDF (23 K)
The New Criterion  Gallery chronicle  November 2011   PDF (1.2 MB)
Wall Street Journal  A Modern Movement Unto Himself  October 29 - 30, 2011   PDF (0.9 MB)
Time Out New York  Braque rocks uptown  October 27 - Novemer 2, 2011   PDF (1 MB)
CityArts  Pioneers in Shadows  October 26, 2011   PDF (64 K)
The New York Times  Stealing the Show  October 21, 2011   PDF (45 K)
The New York Times  The Other Father of Cubism  October 14, 2011   PDF (38 K)
Vanity Fair  Georges Braque: From Fauvism to Cubism  October 12, 2011   PDF (95 K)
The New York Observer  By Georges! Gallery Offers a View of Braque's Evolution  October 12, 2011   PDF (631 K)
Wall Street Journal  Fall Preview: Art  September 9, 2011   PDF (5.5 MB)
The New York Observer  Step Aside, Picasso: Acquavella Plans a Braque Retrospective  July 20, 2011   PDF (54 K)

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More Info

Georges Braque  Artist Page  View

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Catalogues

Georges Braque Pioneer of Modernism  (OUT OF PRINT)  View

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Acquavella Galleries

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