Georges Braque (1882-1963) was a French painter, printmaker and sculptor. He played a pivotal role in the development of Fauvism and Cubism, two seminal movements in the emergence of Modernism.
Braque and Pablo Picasso worked closely between 1908 and 1912, producing Cubist works that explored the concept of simultaneous perspective. Braque was drawn to lithography because the process was more painterly than other printmaking techniques.
He made his first lithographs in 1921, playing with the dark, muddy palette he used in some of his most famous paintings. After this brief period of experimentation he abandoned the medium for a number of years, only returning to lithography in 1945 at age 63.
The print in our collection is from 1952. Its greater array of colors and undulating, painterly forms are marks of the artist's later approach to the medium.