“Best known as the co-founder of Cubism with Pablo Picasso and as the inventor of the papier collé technique, Georges Braque’s legacy is better understood in the context of his lasting influence on artists for the past century,” says William Acquavella, whose gallery is showing an important exhibition of Braque through November. “The purpose of this retrospective is to present the artist not only as the cocreator of Fauvism and Cubism but also as a profoundly passionate, progressive and influential painter all the years of his life, well beyond his early triumphs.

“Together, Braque and Picasso invented a new aesthetic by portraying their subjects from multiple vantage points. They created a new pictorial world in which an object was deconstructed and then reconstructed on the basis of geometric criteria. They used forms that resembled geometric cubes. Still lifes became Braque’s preferred vehicle for innovation, and he was celebrated for instilling the most everyday objects with a profound spirituality usually reserved for devotional painting.”

The gallery notes Braque’s own remarks on the project: “A lemon and an orange side by side cease to be a lemon and an orange and become fruit. The mathematicians follow this law; so do we.”

“Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism” runs through November 30 at Acquavella Galleries, 18 East 79th Street, between Madison and Fifth avenues, 212-794-9394, acquavellagalleries.com.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.