Heger De Loewenfeld

Georges Braque was born in Argenteuil, France, in 1882. Braque lived much of his childhood and young adult life in Le Havre. He attended night classes at the art school from 1897–99 and then moved to Paris, where he obtained his license as a master decorator. From 1905–06, after studying at École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and having been influenced by the works of Henri Matisse, he began to paint in the way of Fauvism by using bright colors and taking advantage of the freedom of the composition. Paysage à L'Estaque (1906) was one of the prominent works of art made at this time.

The year 1907 was a significant time in Braque's development, wherein he visited the retrospective on Paul Cézanne and he came into contact with Picasso, who was very engrossed in the realization of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at the time. At this point, Braque began nurturing a considerable interest in primitive art. After the First World War, Braque worked autonomously and developed a more personal style, which was characterized by vivid colors and textured surfaces. Braque painted still life, interior views, and ocean scenes. The Ateliers (1948–55) and Birds (1955–63) series were painted during this period. In 1948, he obtained his first award for painting at the XXIV Biennial in Venice.

Rooted in centuries of history of adornment dating back to the ancient world, modern jewelry reimagines traditional techniques, forms and materials for expressive new pieces. As opposed to contemporary jewelry, which responds to the moment in which it was created, modern jewelry often describes designs from the 20th to 21st centuries that reflect movements and trends in visual culture.

Modern jewelry emerged from the 19th-century shift away from jewelry indicating rank or social status. The Industrial Revolution allowed machine-made jewelry using electric gold plating, metal alloys and imitation stones, making beautiful jewelry widely accessible. Although mass production deemphasized the materials of the jewelry, the vision of the designer remained important, something that would be furthered in the 1960s with what’s known as the “critique of preciousness.”

A design fair called the “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” brought global attention to the Art Deco style in 1925 and gathered a mix of jewelry artists alongside master jewelers like Van Cleef & Arpels, Mauboussin and Boucheron. Art Deco designs from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels unconventionally mixed gemstones like placing rock crystals next to diamonds while borrowing motifs from eclectic sources including Asian lacquer and Persian carpets. Among Cartier’s foremost design preoccupations at the time were high-contrast color combinations and crisp, geometric forms and patterns. In the early 20th century, modernist jewelers like Margaret De Patta and artists such as Alexander Calder — who is better known for his kinetic sculptures than his provocative jewelry — explored sculptural metalwork in which geometric shapes and lines were preferred over elaborate ornamentation.

Many of the innovations in modern jewelry were propelled by women designers such as Wendy Ramshaw, who used paper to craft her accessories in the 1960s. During the 1970s, Elsa Peretti created day-to-night pieces for Tiffany & Co. while designers like Lea Stein experimented with layering plastic, a material that had been employed in jewelry since the mid-19th century and had expanded into Bakelite, acrylics and other unique materials.

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