Georges Braque Cross Stitch Kits & Patterns (2)
Georges Braque (1882–1963) co-invented Cubism with Pablo Picasso — and then, characteristically, got rather less credit for it than he deserved, which seems to have bothered him considerably less than it bothered everyone else on his behalf. The two artists worked so closely together between 1908 and 1914, passing canvases back and forth, building on each other's ideas with a collaborative intensity that has few parallels in art history, that they later admitted they sometimes couldn't tell which of them had painted what. Picasso, being Picasso, ended up with most of the headlines. Braque, being Braque, ended up with a body of work of extraordinary beauty and continued making it quietly and magnificently for another five decades.
Braque came to radical artistic innovation by way of Fauvism — he was initially a follower of Matisse's bold colour experiments before encountering Cézanne's late work in 1907 and experiencing what can only be described as a complete artistic reorientation. Cézanne's geometric approach to form, his insistence on breaking objects into planes and volumes rather than rendering them illusionistically, gave Braque and Picasso the conceptual key they needed to unlock something entirely new. The result was Analytic Cubism — a way of representing objects from multiple viewpoints simultaneously, fracturing the picture plane into overlapping geometric fragments that required the viewer to actively construct meaning from what they were seeing. It was revolutionary, disorienting, and completely unlike anything that had existed before.
What is less well known about Braque is that he was also a man of considerable physical courage — he was seriously wounded in the head during the First World War, underwent two trepanations, and was left partially blinded for a period. He recovered fully, returned to painting, and if anything his work became more assured and more beautiful in the decades that followed. His late studio paintings, his bird series, and his still lifes of the 1940s and 1950s are among the finest works of his career — meditative, richly coloured, and painted with a quiet confidence that comes from someone who has survived the worst and kept going. In counted cross stitch, Braque's geometric compositions, rich muted palette, and beautifully structured still lifes translate into designs of genuine visual sophistication and modern elegance. Browse our Georges Braque cross stitch kit collection and choose a premium Braque cross stitch kit or download a Georges Braque cross stitch pattern instantly.
