Printer: Mourlot 

Dimensions: 64 x 40 cm

Condition: Very good

Frame: Unframed

Description: This lithographic poster from 1963 reproduces an illustration by Braque for Lettera Amorosa, a collection of poems by René Char. In the text, Char draws on classical lyrical forms to create a landscape in which the lovers move and unfold.
Braque was a natural choice as illustrator. His work is rooted in observation of the natural world, and he shared with Char a long standing friendship and a similar view of nature as a setting for human experience and emotion.

Artist: Georges Braque (1882 - 1963) 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.