His most notable contributions were in his alliance with Fauvism from , and the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque's work between and is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.
Braque's earliest works were impressionistic , but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the " Fauves " Beasts in , he adopted a Fauvist style. Braque's paintings of β reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions.
In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image. He showed this in the painting Houses at l'Estaque. Beginning in , Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso who had been developing a similar proto-Cubist style of painting.
Picasso celebrates animation, while Braque celebrates contemplation. These artists were the style's main innovators. After meeting in October or November , [ 10 ] Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism.
On 14 November , the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles , in his review of Georges Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler 's gallery called Braque a daring man who despises form, "reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes". Art historian Ernst Gombrich described Cubism as "the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the pictureβthat of a man-made construction, a colored canvas.
