The Late Braque at the Phillips and Some Comments on the Braque Centennial

Abstract

The past year, 1982, was the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Georges Braque (1882–1963), one of history's finest painters. The Braque celebrations, like the man himself, have been relatively modest. Nonetheless, there have been three illuminating exhibits to mark the occasion. In June, the Centre Georges Pompidou mounted two simultaneous exhibits: one, Braque, oeuvres des Georges Braque, with detailed catalogue by Nadine Pouillon and Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, provided an overview through works from French public collections; the other, Georges Braque, les Papiers Collés, was created jointly by the Musée National d'Art Moderne and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This, under the respective curatorship of Monod-Fontaine and E.A. Carmean, Jr., explored the artist's creation of collage, which introduced the final Synthetic Cubist phase of his collaboration with Picasso between 1912 and 1914. Finally, Robert Cafritz of The Phillips Collection has composed the beautiful and much needed Georges Braque: The Late Paintings, which includes works from the Paris retrospective as well as works from the Phillips' own and numerous other public and private collections from around the world.