Their Cubist adventure led Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque along parallel paths up until 1914. That year, when the First World War broke out, Braque joined up and went to the front. By the time he returned to painting, his work and Picasso’s had taken very different paths. Cartes et dés (Cards and Dice) has the added value of being one of the last works done during the period when the two artists shared the same aesthetic ideas. Framed by a horizontal oval reminiscent of a games table, the composition is structured around a number of motifs (cards, dice, a glass, etc.), mostly associated with games of chance. The complexity of the volumes and the incorporation of some tones that get away from the chromatic severity of Cubism are signs of Braque’s experimentation with regard to the discovery and subsequent development of the papiers collés technique. Already some distance from the rigidity of Analytical Cubism, Cartes et dés anticipates the sensuousness of later compositions by the artist.
