Georges Braque “The Clarinet” (La Clarinette) at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in Italy

Painting - Oil and Sand on Canvas (91.4 x 64.5 cm) Summer-Autumn 1912

Braque, The Clarinet “The Clarinet” was realized in 1912, at the time of the decline of analytical cubism.

It is an oval picture, symptomatic of this cubist period that wanted to free itself from the angles.

The clarinet, presented diagonally, crosses another of the painting's diagonals where the head of a guitar appears (top left).

These two instruments, in their most visible part, are also the most “lighter” in terms of material and pictorial treatment; they are almost “hollow” in the painting.

In several parts of it, Braque insists on the presence of wood.

Planks with their veins are particularly present, a presence further strengthened by mixing sand with paint to give even more relief.

To highlight the clarinet and the guitar, Braque chose to put them “in negative” compared to the thick material and darker colours of the rest of the painting.

This “negative” is underlined by their diagonal positioning, which diagonally is further accentuated and reinforced by the other diagonal of the text “VALSE”(Waltz).

Braque, The Clarinet