Houses at l'Estaque
Link to image ( Please note copyrights )
Houses at L' Estaque ( original French title Maisons à l' Estaque ) is the title of an oil painting by the French painter Georges Braque from 1908, created in L' Estaque near Marseilles. It is the image that has triggered the first time the concept of " cubes" (see → Cubism ). The painting with the dimensions 73 × 60 cm located in the Kunstmuseum Bern.
Description
L' Estaque was on the Bay of Marseille in the early 20th century still a fishing village, which is already the French painter Paul Cézanne had chosen in his paintings as a motive. Unlike some of Cézanne's pictures can not be seen in Braque's paintings of the sea. Between multiple staggered ocher -colored houses in close-up are leafy trees. In the foreground cuts a mighty tree trunk and its branches unbelaubtes, starting from the center diagonally to the left, the image field. Details such as doors and windows of the houses, which are shown in a highly simplified cubic form, are missing.
History
Beginning of the year 1907 prepared Pablo Picasso in many studies and variations the painting Les Demoiselles d' Avignon ago, he finished in July. It is considered the image that laid the foundation " cubist " thinking and initiated often referred to as " période nègre " designated period of the artist. The leading to misunderstandings naming " période nègre " was because Picasso had also been inspired by African sculpture. At the end of the year, Braque Picasso visited in his studio and saw the picture that made him both confused and fascinated. As a result, developed a friendship between the two artists, so they saw each other almost daily between September 1908 and May 1909. The mutual influence, which should lead to Cubism, had begun.
In the Paris Autumn Salon of 1907 the large memorial exhibition of Paul Cézanne had been shown. The landscapes and still lifes Cézanne have influenced Braque's work in his own words and excited to travel to L' Estaque.
The Houses in L'Estaque, Braque painted alongside others from the region in 1908; it occupies in the history of art played an important part, because it has been implicated as the first image in the public with the concept of " cubes" ( cubes ) in conjunction. After Braque 1908 Salon d'Automne - or Autumn Salon - was dismissed in Paris with his new paintings from L' Estaque, he placed it in November of the year in 1907 opened gallery of the German gallery Daniel -Henry Kahnweiler from. The art critic Louis Vauxcelles, which at an exhibition at the Salon d' Automne at the sight of works of painters such as Henri Matisse and André Derain, the term " Fauves ", wild animals, had come to mind as early as 1905 and given the name so Fauvism had, wrote in Gil Blas to the exhibition with Kahnweiler: " Braque whistles on the form; it simplifies everything, landscape and houses, to geometric pattern shapes to cubes ". In the spring of 1909 he repeated after an exhibition at the Salon des Independants, where Braque in addition to a landscape still showed a still life, his rebuke, and spoke of " péruvien cubisme " ( peruvianischer Cubism ), thus the term Cubism quickly established.