Modern Canvas Art Paintings

The term modern art refers to those artistic movements, their concepts and the art works produced during a one hundred year period which began around 1860. Of all those art movements and artists who created notable art works during this time George Braque (1882 – 1963) and Cubism are among the most well known and revered: Along with of course, Braque’s Cubist cofounder Pablo Picasso.

The era of modern art saw those latent traditions which had somewhat stagnated the arts moved aside in favor of bold experimentation and expression. Much of today’s contemporary art reflects those new ideas which include abstraction, truth to materials and the function or role of art. All these concepts and new techniques born from them began with innovative artists such as Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin.

“How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermillion.” – Paul Gauguin

George Braque was among those young artists who encouraged the avant-garde of Paris with the expressive style of their figurative oil paintings and landscapes. Les Fauves (The Wild Beasts) began developing their theories at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were a short lived although potent and influential group of artists led by Henri Matisse and André Derain. The Fauve style favored vivid and expressive qualities of color over realism: Brush strokes were fervent; forms were simplified and erring toward abstraction - Reflecting the Post-Impressionist works of Vincent Van Gogh and the Pointillist techniques of George Seurat. Theirs was a wild colorful world that both shocked and revolutionized the art world.

Pablo Picasso and George Braque were undoubtedly influenced by the work of Gauguin and Cézanne. The large naked women that appeared in Picasso’s work from around 1906 reflected his work and so directly influenced one of his most ground breaking and well known oil paintings - Les Demoiselles d'Avignoncreated in 1907. It is believed that Picasso was introduced to his work as early as 1902 by mutual friend Paco Durio: Who gave him a copy of the artist’s book - Noa Noa: The Tahiti Journal of Paul Gauguin. In addition they Gauguin and Picasso were both represented by notable gallery owner Ambroise Vollard.

Picasso and Braque’s first Cubist paintings were derived from the oeuvre of Cezanne’s work. That was to reduce the natural world to its most basic forms – The cube, cone and sphere. Braque and Picasso would continue their experimentation and investigations until around 1912. This was when Analytic Cubism signified a sure manifestation of their studies. The idea continued to evolve which gave rise to Synthetic Cubism – A concept that broadened that investigation by merging collage and textured surfaces with more traditional mediums: A style that remains popular today. Synthetic Cubism was the oeuvre of several notable artists, such as Duchamp and Gris as well as Braque and Picasso, until around 1920.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When it comes to modern art for the home or a private office the choice is most certainly a personal one: Even so, today all styles of modern art remain popular: Cubist and impressionist canvas art works definitely – And there is little modern of contemporary art that does not hail in some way to the concept of abstraction. George Braque believed that for an artist beauty was experienced in terms of “volume of line, of mass, of weight; and through that beauty they interpret their subjective impression”: And for Braque that subject always became an "object shattered into fragments”: Because in this way he could be closer and so study that object more intimately.

“Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space” – George Braque

Braque began his artistic life creating landscape oil paintings: Around 1910 his attention to Still Life: “In the still-life you have a tactile; I might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them…In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other”. The oil paintings produced by Braque early on in his Cubist career were largely neutral and often monochromatic: So as not to deviant the attention of the viewer from the beauty of the pure forms – Therefore the object.

George Braque continued to develop his own style throughout his artistic life. The monochromatic colors of his early works were replaced by a far more varied and intense palette. His work remained committed to the concepts and techniques of Cubism although his oil on canvas art works became took on a more relaxed ambience as did the forms. George Braque died in 1963 regarded then as a pioneer of Modern Art: And that legacy continues today.