With the exhibition Georges Braque. Inventor of Cubism, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen pays tribute to Georges Braque (1882-1963) as one of the most important artists of the French avant-garde. From 25 September 2021 to 23 January 2022, around 60 masterpieces from international museums, private collections and the holdings of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen will be exhibited at the K20 in Düsseldorf with the aim of illustrating the extraordinary development of modern art from representational to abstract depiction of reality through Braque's work. The focus is on the exciting and eventful early work of the artist in the years between 1906 and 1914.
In the years leading up to the First World War, groundbreaking inventions, new ways of thinking and philosophies emerged in Western Europe. The industrial revolution brought about new technology such as cars and aeroplanes, but also developments in cinema and film. At the same time, Georges Braque and his friend Pablo Picasso shaped an equally revolutionary period in modern painting with Cubism over a period of just under a decade. Braque knew like few others how to expand the stylistic means of his time and thus both help to develop and shape styles such as Fauvism, Pre-Cubism, Analytic and Synthetic Cubism. At the same time, the young artist and avid cinema-goer was fascinated by the new techniques within the film industry; his works seem like an artistic chronology of the events of his time. This fascination is explored in Georges Braque. Inventor of Cubism and reconciles Braque's artistic phases with a historical context.
