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Gris Juan | 1887-1927 | [ Back | Photos ]
Text from Edward Lucie-Smith, "Lives
of the Great 20th-Century Artists"
"Juan Gris was a quietist, whose
life was ostensibly marked by few
major incidents. Though not the inventor
of Cubism, he was one of its most
able practitioners and evolved a very
personal variety of it, combining
elements which he had learned from
Braque and Picasso with others which
were his own personal invention. Typical
of his approach was his remark about
Cezanne, the universally acknowledged
father of Cubism: 'Cezanne made a
cylinder out of a bottle. I start
from the cylinder to create a special
kind of individual object. I make
a bottle out of a cylinder.' A highly
intelligent man, he had a marked impact
on other painters - not only on the
artists of the Section d'Or, the group
with whom he identified himself, but
also on senior members of the Ecole
de Paris, such as Matisse, with whom
he spent the summer at Collioure in
1914. He had a special sympathy for
poets, and collaborated with a number
of distinguished writers, among them
Pierre Reverdy, whose Guitare Endormie
he illustrated, Gertrude Stein and
Raymond Radiguet.
"Gris was a pseudonym: he was born
Jose Victoriano González in 1887,
in Madrid, the thirteenth child of
a rich Castilian merchant. He studied
first to be an engineer at the School
of Arts and Manufactures in Madrid,
which he entered in 1902. By the time
he abandoned this for an artistic
career he was already contributing
illustrations to the reviews Blanco
y Negro and Madrid Comico.
"Madrid at this time was an extremely
provincial milieu, much more so than
Barcelona, and as soon as he could
Gris abandoned it for Paris, arriving
there in 1906 at the age of nineteen.
He found himself a studio at the famous
Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, and was
soon in contact with his compatriot
Picasso, who also lived and worked
there, and with the poets Guillaume
Apollinaire, Max Jacob and André Salmon,
who formed part of Picasso's circle.
At first he supported himself by
making humorous drawings for papers
such as Lássiette au beurre and Le
Charivari, but in 1910 he began his
career as a serious artist by making
a series of large watercolours. In
the following year he started to paint.
Gris's subject-matter was always his
immediate surroundings: he produced
still lifes composed of simple, everyday
objects, portraits of friends, and
occasionally landscapes or cityscapes.
"In 1911 (the year in which he spent
time with Picasso at Ceret) he held
his first exhibition, showing fifteen
paintings at the little gallery run
by Clovis Sagot. This was well received
by those whose opinion he respected,
and he was sufficiently encouraged
to send three paintings to the Salon
des Indépendants in the spring of
1912. In October of the same year
he showed his work in the Section
d'Or exhibition, with Marcoussis,
Gleizes and Metzinger. Since Braque
and Picasso were not at this time
showing their work, the Section d'Or
was the public face of Cubism.
Gris was clearly the most gifted
of the group, and he attracted the
attention both of dealers and of well
informed collectors. Gertrude Stein
and Leonce Rosenberg bought paintings,
and Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler offered
Gris a contract, which he accepted.
His work was evolving rapidly; he
had grasped the significance of collage
almost as soon as it was invented
by Braque and Picasso in 1912. This
liberated his compositional sense
enabling him to evolve the subtler
patterns of overlapping planes characteristic
of his mature work. At this time he
was friendly with the Delaunays. Sonia
recalled that he spent so much time
at the Bal Bullier, their favourite
night-spot, that they wondered that
he still had enough energy left to
work.
"The outbreak of war brought a momentary
check, since Kahnweiler was an enemy
alien and was forced to leave Paris.
Gris's contract with him lapsed, but
in 1917 he was able to make another
with Leonce Rosenberg which tided
him over until Kahnweiler's return
to France, when he renewed his former
allegiance. But in 1920, just after
his new contract was signed, Gris
suffered a serious attack of pleurisy,
and his health was never to be strong
again.
"Diaghilev was now taking an interest
in Gris, having recognized in him
a kind of classicism in tune with
postwar taste. A first project, for
Cuadro Flamenco, did not come to fruition,
but in November 1922 Diaghilev commissioned
Gris to design sets and costumes for
Les Tentations de la Berë, which was
premiered in 1924. In 1925 Gris had
his first exhibition - and the only
one in his lifetime - outside France,
at the Flechtheim Gallery in Duesseldorf.
His health was now very poor: bronchitis
was succeeded by asthma and finally
by uremia. Gris died on 11 May 1927
at the age of forty, leaving a wife,
Josette, and a son, Georges."
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| Gris Juan |
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| Bananas |
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| Open window with hills |
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| Guitar with clarinet |
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| Portrait of madame Josette Gris |
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