Sculptor and painter Georges Braquewas born on May 13, 1882 in Argenteuil-sur-Seine, France. He was the son of a painting contractor who, naturally, taught his craft to his son as he worked – he was also a Sunday painter, and would spend a fair bit of time giving his son art lessons. Braque learned quickly how to imitate a variety of surfaces in paint form from his father, invaluable lessons for the budding artist.

Home teaching only lasts so long, however, and eventually the talented young man was shipped off at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre. He stayed there between 1897 and 1899, after which he was apprenticed to a decorator in Paris. After three more years he was given his certificate, but still his schooling didn’t end – in 1903 he went to the Academie Humbert, still in Paris, and remained there until 1904.

Braque was originally an impressionist painter, but once he saw the work exhibited by Les Fauves in 1905 he promptly switched into a new mode of art, Fauvism. Les Fauves included such artists as Andre Derain and Henri Matisse and, using bright colors and loose forms, did their best to express emotional reaction over reality. Braque began painting among other Fauvist painters and, in 1907, traveled between Friesz, L’Estaque, Antwerp and home to Le Havre, all in the pursuit of new subjects to paint.

He exhibited his resultant work in 1907 in the Salon des Independants, to critical acclaim. Not long after he fell under the influence of Paul Cezanne, who’d died the year before, studying his paintings and adopting Cezanne’s style of his own accord. A retrospective held on Cezanne’s career in 1907 in Paris was particularly influential, not just on Braque but much of the Parisian artistic community, eventually leading to the development ofcubism.

This cubist influence affected Braque’s paintings for the next five years as he developed an interest in geometry. He studied the effect of light and perspective, not to mention the resources available to artists to emulate these effects in their paintings. He would regularly take scenes and reduce them to their absolute geometric minimums, nevertheless shading them in such a way that they would appear three dimensional.

In 1909 Braque began working with Pablo Picasso, who was looking into similar painting methods. The two of them formally invented cubism, who not only lead the movement but sent it in new and innovative directions. Their collaboration lasted until 1914, when Braque enlisted in the French army to fight in the First World War.

Braque continued to paint after the war, though he’d been badly wounded and sought a more solitary existence thereafter. He all but abandoned cubism and developed a style all his own that incorporated more realistic elements. He would continue painting in this form until his death on August 31, 1963.