Georges Braque

Original Prints: Etchings

A founder of cubism who first trained as an artisan (in the sense of fine craftsmanship),  Georges Braque (1882 - 1963)  was a master printmaker with a fiercely personal style who focused on still-lifes throughout his career, refining texture and form through a graphic reduction of figures to their essential. *

In over 50 years, Georges Braque explored most printmaking media, with an impressive œuvre of nearly 200 works, and his etchings are quite finely elaborated. 

* As he wrote in Le Jour et la Nuit, Cahiers 1917-1952 (Gallimard, 1988):  "Le vase donne une forme au vide, et la musique au silence."   ["The vase gives form to emptiness, and music to silence."]

Bouquet Vert [Green Bouquet] Vallier 70 etching in two colours, 1951, two rare undescribed trial proofs, the second signed and annotated "Epreuve d'essai" by the artist, with variants in colour and the amount of aquatint work on the hanging foliage, before the Maeght edition of 30 impressions This fine print is one of Braque's earliest floral still-lifes, a genre to which he was to devote much of his attention in the 1950s.

Le Lierre [Ivy] Vallier 99 etching in two colours, 1955, the only known state, signed and numbered by the artist, from the Maeght edition of 75 impressions This fine print is one of Braque's largest etchings, if not the most colourful, and clearly in line with his greater vision...