Georges Braque
Viaduct in L’Estaque (Le Viaduc de l’Estaque), early 1908
Oil on canvas
72.5 x 59 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
Gift, 1984
© Georges Braque, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2014
Photograph © Georges Meguerditchian - Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Dist. RMN-GP
Cubism
1908-1909
1907 marked the beginning of a great friendship but, above all, it marked the birth of Cubism, a new pictorial language presaged by Paul Cézanne’s formal innovations. Braque’s first Cubist works present a solid geometric fragmentation of objects and the pictorial space, as well as a departure from the single perspective which had dominated art up to that point, instead choosing to depict objects in their most essential forms from multiple vantage points.