Guitar, Plate, Fruit Dish, Pitcher, and Music Score

Guitar, Plate, Fruit Dish, Pitcher, and Music Score is a significant oil on canvas painting created by Georges Braque in 1925. This work marks a mature phase in the artist’s output, following the rigorous visual fragmentation of Analytic Cubism and the initial consolidation of Synthetic Cubism. While retaining the flattened, overlapping vocabulary he developed before the First World War, this painting from the mid-1920s exhibits a more relaxed approach to form and a richer, less restrictive palette than Braque's earlier, monochrome Cubist compositions. The still life genre remained central to the French master’s exploration of perception and volume throughout his career.

Braque utilized the medium of oil on canvas to depict familiar domestic objects, including the recurring musical motifs of the guitar and the music score, alongside basic elements like a plate, fruit dish, and pitcher. Unlike the angular rigidity of earlier Cubist works, the forms in this piece are often softer and more defined, relying on complex texture and subtle color modulation to articulate the relationships between objects in space. Braque often integrates patterned wallpaper or decorative elements in his work from this era, moving toward a style where sensory appeal returned to the canvas without sacrificing the complexity of multiple viewpoints. The measured arrangement of these items demonstrates Braque’s persistent focus on the relationship between the two-dimensional picture plane and the illusion of three-dimensional depth.

Completed in the designated period of 1925, Guitar, Plate, Fruit Dish, Pitcher, and Music Score exemplifies the direction of European modernism in the interwar years. This influential painting is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, where it serves as a key representation of the Post-Cubist era. Due to the historical importance of this piece, high-quality documentation is frequently sought, and fine art prints reproducing the image are widely available through various reference sources.