When we think of Cubism, Pablo Picasso’s name usually dominates the marquee. Yet the radical dismantling of Western perspective that defined early twentieth-century modern art was never a solo crusade. It was the product of an intense, turbulent, and symbiotic art partnership between Picasso and French painter Georges Braque—a creative dialogue so intertwined that Braque famously remarked they were like “two mountaineers roped together.” An Unlikely Alliance (1907–1908) The story began in late 1907 inside Picasso’s chaotic Montmartre studio at the Bateau-Lavoir. Introduced by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, Braque stood before Picasso’s freshly completed, shocking canvas Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Initial reactions to the aggressive, jagged painting were mixed—Braque initially confessed…