Located in Paris opposite the Elysée Palace, Galerie de la Présidence offers a selection of Masters from the first half of the 20th Century and regularly organizes exhibitions and retrospectives since 1971: Paul Signac, Jean Fautrier, Giacometti & Gruber, Albert Marquet, Maurice de Vlaminck, H.E. Cross, Jean Hélion, Marcel Gromaire, Sonia Delaunay… Galerie de la Présidence joins major Art fairs around the world like TEFAF Maastricht, Fine Art Paris, BRAFA Brussels, The Salon du Dessin Paris…
Last, Galerie de la Présidence regularly lends works to museums for major thematic exhibitions such as Marquet a retrospective (Hiroshima Museum of Art, 2026), Eugène Boudin (Sompo Museum, Tokyo, 2026), Matisse, Derain and Friends (Kunstmuseum Basel, 2023-2024), Marquet in Normandy (Muma Le Havre, 2023) – Suzanne Valadon (Centre Pompidou Paris, 2025 and Pompidou Metz, 2023)…
George BRAQUE
(1882-1963)
L’aquarium
1944
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
65 x 81 cm – 25.59 x 31.89 in.
Signed in the bottom right-hand corner
Provenance
– Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris ( n°15881, Ph n°1686)
– Private collection, Belgium
Bibliography
– « Une aventure méthodique », Pierre Reverdy, Paris, 1949, illustrated pl. V
– « Catalogue de l’œuvre de Georges Braque. Peintures 1942-1947 » Maeght Editeur, Paris, 1960, n°83
An inventive painter, Georges Braque deconstructed reality to reconstruct his paintings using shapes and volumes, textures and collages, thereby becoming one of the great masters of Cubism and still life.
When the Second World War broke out and the German occupation spread, Braque left Varengeville-sur-Mer for the Limousin and then the Pyrenees, before returning to Paris in the autumn of 1940. During this period, fish frequently featured in his work. Echoing his anxieties during these troubled times, the fish in his 1941–1942 works are sombre, as in Les Poissons noirs (1942, collection of the Musée national d’art moderne – Centre Pompidou) or in La Carafe et les poissons (1941), dedicated to Jean Paulhan, who wrote to him:
‘The fish makes me think deeply of that blend of extreme violence and serenity which is, nevertheless, so characteristic of you.’
Whilst these works exude a thoughtful austerity, as the war drew to a close his palette lightened and the colours became more cheerful. His brushwork became freer, and the backgrounds more translucent, as in our Aquarium from 1944.
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