Georges Braque - Braque Graveur - 1953 (1959)

Title: Georges Braque - Braque Graveur - 1953

Artist: Georges Braque

Year of printing: 1959

Publisher / Printer: Mourlot

Origin: France

Technique: Original chromolithography on paper

Size (inc. mat): 40 x 30 cm.

Size image: 22 x 15.9 cm

Professionally matted in acid-free museum quality mat-board.

Georges Braque (1882–1963) was a foundational force in 20th-century modernism, leaving a profound legacy as a painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. His initial impact on art history began with his brief alliance with Fauvism in 1905, but his most revolutionary achievement was his co-development of Cubism. Between 1908 and 1912, Braque worked in an extraordinarily tight, symbiotic partnership with Pablo Picasso. During this intense period of experimentation, their radical, fragmented compositions were practically indistinguishable from one another. However, Braque’s characteristically quiet, introspective nature meant his immense contributions were occasionally overshadowed by Picasso's public notoriety. Throughout his career, Braque remained a master of structural harmony, famous for his deeply thoughtful still lifes and sophisticated manipulation of space, texture, and colour.

This particular lithograph was pulled by Mourlot Frères, the historic Paris workshop that fundamentally redefined the graphic arts by elevating the commercial exhibition advertisement into a fine art medium. Beginning in the 1930s with highly collected art posters for major retrospectives of Delacroix, Daumier, and Manet at the French National Museums, Mourlot became the epicentre of a modern print revival.

Concurrently, the atelier rescued limited-edition artist lithography from relative obscurity. During the early decades of the 20th century, the medium had largely been cast aside by contemporary painters, despite having reached a spectacular creative peak in the 1880s through the work of masters like Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard—nearly a century after its initial invention by Aloys Senefelder.

The trajectory of modern printmaking shifted permanently when Fernand Mourlot (grandson of the founder) began inviting an entirely new generation of painters into the shop to work directly onto heavy lithographic limestone blocks. This hands-on, deeply collaborative dynamic between artist and master printer fundamentally transformed the medium.

A major milestone occurred in 1937 when the studio created two promotional posters—one by Bonnard and one by Henri Matisse—for the Maîtres de l'Art indépendant exhibition at the Petit Palais. The extraordinary tonal richness and fidelity of these prints immediately secured Mourlot’s reputation as Europe’s premier fine art lithographer. That same year initiated a historic partnership with the visionary publisher Tériade for his iconic art review, Verve. Following the Second World War, the studio became a regular laboratory for modern titans like Matisse, Braque himself, Bonnard, Georges Rouault, and Joan Miró, who all gathered there to pull vital graphic works for the review. In 1945, Picasso also selected the Mourlot studio for his intensive return to printmaking, establishing a workspace in a corner of the shop where he would immerse himself for months at a time.

In 1959, a Monte Carlo publisher commissioned a definitive catalogue raisonné to preserve and document these historic exhibition posters. Although rendered in a more compact format, these miniature plates were printed directly by Mourlot using traditional lithography (complemented occasionally by fine offset detailing). Because of the rigorous production standards and the absolute involvement of the atelier, these small-format editions are highly prized by collectors and are universally catalogued as an authentic part of the artists' graphic oeuvres.