Born into a modest family, in 1897 André Lhote (Bordeaux, 1885 – Paris, 1962) began to work as an apprentice for the furniture manufacturer Courbaterre. Between 1898 and 1904 he studied decorative sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux and in 1905 he sought a studio where he could practice painting on a self-taught basis. One can appreciate the influence of Gauguin and Cézanne in his early works.

In 1907 he relocated to Paris and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants [Salon of the Independents] and at the Salon d’Automne [Autumn Salon]. He held his first individual exhibition in 1910 at Galerie Druet. In 1912 he joined the group Section d’Or [Golden Section], closely linked to Cubism, and applied the Cubist aesthetic to scenes of everyday life. After World War I, he joined the circle of artists supported by Léonce Rosenberg and his gallery L’Effort Moderne, dedicated to the promotion of Synthetic Cubism.

Aside from being a painter, Lhote was a writer, an art theoretician, and one of the founders of La Nouvelle Revue Française [The New French Review]. He was also an art professor and the founder of the Académie Montparnasse in Paris and its Brazilian sister academy in 1952. Treatise On Landscape (1938), First, The Painting (1942) and Treatise On the Figure (1950) are among his most important theoretical works.