Les Peintres Temoins De Leur Temps - Musee Galliera, Paris 1961, Orginal Lithograph

This lithographic poster was created by the Mourlot Studio to promote the annual exhibition in 1961 of Les Peintres témoins de leurs temps which translates to ‘Painters who are witnesses of their time’. The image of the birds can be seen on the ceiling in the Salle Henri II in the Louvre in Paris. It was one of Braque’s three panels commissioned by the museum in 1953.
Artist: Georges Braque was a French painter from Normandy best known for developing cubism with Pablo Picasso. From school, he followed his family’s trade as a house painter and decorator, taking art classes at night before moving to Paris to study at the Académie Humbert in Montmartre. Inspired by the impressionists, he focused on landscapes with increasing use of bold colour and shapes which resulted in his alliance with fauvism. This artistic movement, steered by Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, Othon Friesz and Raoul Dufy broke new ground in art as it moved away from representational form. Braque had by then met Picasso and between 1906 and the outbreak of the First World War, they began to further deconstruct artistic norms to develop cubism. Braque sustained a severe head injury during the war and was slow to return to art but it was said his work was bolder, freer, and his style continued to evolve as he embraced collage, sculpting, lithography, jewellery design and stage sets. He died in 1963.