Georges BRAQUE

Braque was among the great artists of the 20th century who devoted themselves—modestly as well—to tapestry. It was first at the request of Marie Cuttoli, as early as 1933, that he would entrust works intended to be reproduced in tapestry (Still Life with a Writing Desk, on deposit at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Grenoble). In the 1950s and 1960s, it was Pierre Baudouin, in liaison with the weavers of Aubusson and the Manufactures Nationales, who was tasked with developing cartons-transcriptions from the artist’s works. At the same time, shortly before his death in 1963, Braque produced a final series of gouaches on the theme of metamorphoses, intended to be transcribed into different media. Tapestry was one of them.

« The Three Graces », from 1962, is one of these gouaches that would be transposed into sculpture or jewelry. One finds there the lyrical yet synthetic style of the artist’s late works, which can be seen, for example, in the decoration of the ceiling of the Salle Henri II at the Musée du Louvre, the Birds, 1953.