Reminiscent of the art movement he helped pioneer, Georges Braque was a celebrated artist and musician who incorporated elements of music into his artworks. In fact, his studio was filled with various musical instruments which he collected and used as props for still-life paintings. This is due to the fact that music was an important inspiration for Cubism, which Braque helped shape.
The artist’s interest in musical instruments is evident in many of his paintings. His Violin and Palette features a small stringed instrument called a madora, made up of different geometric shapes to suggest rhythm matching the musical subject painted. This sense of cadence only adds to Braque’s masterful use of color, light, and shadows that makes this artwork one-of-a-kind.
Instruments played key roles in shaping Braque’s interwar periods since he considered them still-life objects with forms and volume that could be easily translated onto two-dimensional canvases. Braque had an intimate relationship with these objects because it paralleled with his artistic goals of bridging harmony between traditional forms while experimenting with new geometrical arrangements.
