Landscape at La Ciotat

A southern French landscape of houses and hills blazes with hot, arbitrary color - pinks, oranges, and greens laid on in bold, free strokes. Georges Braque painted Landscape at La Ciotat at the height of his Fauve phase, intoxicated by Mediterranean light and the example of Matisse. Now in the Museum of Modern Art, it captures him just before his fateful turn - within a year, struck by Cezanne and by Picasso's Demoiselles, he would abandon this exuberant color for the austere, faceted analysis of Cubism, which the two of them would invent together.