Still Life with Guitar

Georges Braque

1936–1957

Oil and sand on canvas

Dallas Museum of Art

Painted intermittently between 1936 and 1956, Still Life with Guitar is a tour de force from Georges Braque’s mature period. Posed on a round table covered by a white cloth are some of Braque’s favorite motifs: pairs of yellow ceramic vases and lemons, a ficelle (type of bread), and a highly stylized guitar that mimics the form of a bird. The veined marbling in the ambiguous background recalls the imitation wood technique that Braque first explored in 1912. Although this painting may seem far removed from his earlier Cubist concerns, Braque never stopped probing the language and mechanics of pictorial representation. Here he continu