Juan Gris

The Spanish painter Juan Gris (1887-1927) is one of the major cubist painters. His work is distinguished by its lucidity and austerity.

Juan Gris, whose real name was José Victoriano Gonzalez, was born in Madrid on March 23, 1887. He studied engineering at Madrid's School of Arts and Sciences. He also took painting lessons with the minor academic artist José Maria Carbonero and sold humorous drawings to local newspapers.

Gris arrived in Paris in 1906 and remained in France the rest of his life. He had skipped military service, so he could not return to Spain. He settled in the Bateau Lavoir, a tenement that housed many painters, critics, and poets, and there he met Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Maurice Raynal. Gris produced his first cubist paintings in 1911-1912; they were in the analytical cubist vein of Braque and Picasso but characterized by a metalliclike sheen, as in the Guitar and Flowers (1912) and the Portrait of Picasso (1912), in which Picasso's Napoleonic attitude is cleverly caught. The year 1913 marks the beginning of Gris's synthetic cubism, a cubist approach in which the object was no longer faceted into smaller parts but was recombined with other objects or parts of objects to form a new esthetic totality.

Gris and his wife spent the summer of 1913 with Picasso at Ceret, and that year Gris began to use collage consistently in his work. Gris's early collages are frequently richer in detail and bolder in color than contemporary collages of Picasso and Braque, as in the Guitar, Glasses, and Bottle (1914).

In 1914 Gris spent time with Henri Matisse at Collioure. Gris returned to Paris in 1915, and he suffered bleak poverty during World War I. In late 1916 his paintings became more stately and architectonic, and forms became larger and flatter as multiple viewpoints were to an extent abandoned, as in the Violin (1916). Gris referred to these paintings as "flat, colored architecture." In 1917 he executed his only sculpture, a painted plaster Harlequin, which was close to what Jacques Lipchitz was doing at the time.

Between 1917 and 1920 Gris introduced a new complexity in his art. He set up interplays between objects and their shadows and reintroduced complicated planar intersections and sumptuous colors and textures, as in the Fruit Bowl on Checkered Cloth (1917). In 1920 he participated in the Salon des Indépendants at the last exhibition of the united cubist group. That year he fell ill with pleurisy and wintered at Bandol, where he discussed with the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev plans for décors for ballets. Some of these commissions were canceled through intrigues, but others, like Les Tentations de la Bergère, were executed in 1922 and 1923.

Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, who became Gris's dealer in 1920, wrote the first monograph on the painter in 1929. Kahnweiler praised the works of the artist's last period, but many subsequent critics found them empty compared to his previous output. It was as though Gris were producing parodies of himself:in single works there is an uncertain wavering between austerity and decorative complexities, as in the Two Pierrots (1922). Gris's health continued to deteriorate in his last years.

In 1924 and 1925 Gris spent much of his time writing and lecturing on his views on painting. In 1924 he delivered a paper at the Sorbonne, Les Possibilités de la peinture (On the Possibilities of Painting), which was later translated and widely published. He died in Paris on May 11, 1927.

One of Gris's most famous pronouncements was made in 1921:"I consider that the architectural element is mathematics, the abstract side; I want to humanize it. Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder, but I begin with a cylinder and create an individual out of a special type:I make a bottle—a particular bottle—out of a cylinder." Recent investigations have shown that precise measurements, some incorporating a golden mean, were used in a few of Gris's paintings.

Further Reading

An intimate view of Gris is in Letters of Juan Gris, 1913-1927, collected by Daniel Henry Kahnweiler and translated and edited by Douglas Cooper (1956). The best study of Gris is Kahnweiler's Juan Gris: His Life and Work, translated by Cooper (1947; rev. ed. 1969), which is a moving tribute by the artist's loyal friend and dealer and a penetrating analysis of Gris's character and work. The book also includes most of Gris's published writings in English translation. James Thrall Soby, Juan Gris (1958), is a useful guide to the artist's development. □

Gris, Juan (1887–1927). Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer, active mainly in Paris, where he was one of the major figures of Cubism. He was born in Madrid, the son of a wealthy merchant, and his real name was José Victoriano González (he had adopted his pseudonym by about 1905). From 1902 to 1904 he studied mathematics, physics, and engineering in Madrid, then took up painting, training with a local academic artist. In 1906 he moved to Paris and found accommodation in the Bateau-Lavoir, where Picasso was already living. For the next few years he earned his living mainly with humorous drawings for various periodicals and he did not begin painting seriously until 1910. However, he made such rapid strides that by 1912 he was becoming recognized as the leading Cubist painter apart from the founders of the movement, Picasso and Braque. His work stood out at the Section d'Or exhibition in that year, attracting the attention of collectors and dealers ( Gertrude Stein was among those who bought his paintings and Kahnweiler gave him a contract). In 1913–14 he developed a personal version of Synthetic Cubism, in which papier collé played an important part. He said that he conceived of his paintings as ‘flat, coloured architecture’ and his methods of visual analysis were more systematic than those of Picasso and Braque. His subjects were almost all taken from his immediate surroundings (mainly still-lifes, with occasional landscapes and portraits), but he began with the image he had in mind rather than with an object in the external world: ‘I try to make concrete that which is abstract … Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder, but I make a bottle—a particular bottle—out of a cylinder.’ Gris was able to continue working in Paris throughout the First World War, and in 1919 he had his first major one-man exhibition there, at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie l'Effort Moderne. In 1920, however, he was seriously ill, possibly with tuberculosis, and from then on his health was often poor; for this reason he spent much of his time in the South of France. He was only 40 when he died of kidney failure. In this last period of his life his style became more painterly (Violin and Fruit Dish, Tate Gallery, London, 1924). Apart from paintings, his work included polychrome sculpture, book illustrations, and set and costume designs for Diaghilev. Gris was of a logical turn of mind, but Douglas Cooper writes that he ‘always tempered his science with the workings of his personal sensibility, and the many pentimenti and freely invented passages in his paintings are evidence of his constant concern that the reality of natural forms should not be subjected to “monstrous” distortions dictated by some pre-determined design'. He wrote a few essays on his aesthetic ideas and a collection of his letters, edited and translated by Cooper, was published in 1956.

Gris, Juan (b Madrid, 23 Mar. 1887; d Boulogne-sur-Seine, nr. Paris, 11 May 1927). Spanish painter, sculptor, illustrator, and designer, active mainly in Paris, where he settled in 1906. In his early years there he earned his living mainly with humorous drawings for various periodicals and he did not begin painting in earnest until 1910. By this time he was strongly influenced by his fellow Spaniard Picasso and his serious painting was almost entirely in the Cubist manner. He made such rapid strides that by 1912 he was becoming recognized as the leading Cubist painter apart from the founders of the movement, Picasso and Braque. His work stood out at the Section d'Or exhibition in that year, attracting the attention of collectors and dealers ( Gertrude Stein was among those who bought his paintings and Kahnweiler gave him a contract). In 1913–14 he developed a personal version of Synthetic Cubism, in which papier collé played an important part. He said that he conceived of his paintings as ‘flat, coloured architecture’ and his methods of visual analysis were more systematic than those of Picasso and Braque. His subjects were almost all taken from his immediate surroundings (mainly still-lifes, with occasional landscapes and portraits), but he began with the image he had in mind rather than with an object in the external world: ‘I try to make concrete that which is abstract…Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder, but I make a bottle—a particular bottle—out of a cylinder.’

In 1919 Gris had his first major one-man exhibition (at the Galerie l'Effort Moderne in Paris), but in the following year he suffered a serious attack of pleurisy and from then on his health was poor; for this reason he spent much of his time in the south of France. In this last period of his life his style became more painterly (Violin and Fruit Dish, 1924, Tate, London). Apart from paintings, his work included polychrome sculpture, book illustrations, and set and costume designs for Diaghilev. He wrote a few essays on his aesthetic ideas and a collection of his letters, edited and translated by Douglas Cooper, was published in 1956. Although Gris was of a logical turn of mind, Cooper writes that he ‘always tempered his science with the workings of his personal sensibility, and the many pentimenti and freely invented passages in his paintings are evidence of his constant concern that the reality of natural forms should not be subjected to “monstrous” distortions dictated by some pre-determined design’.

Gris, Juan (1887–1927). Spanish painter, sculptor, illustrator, and designer, active mainly in Paris, where he settled in 1906. In his early years there he earned his living mainly with humorous drawings for various periodicals and he did not begin painting in earnest until 1910. By this time he was strongly influenced by his fellow Spaniard Picasso and his serious painting was almost entirely in the Cubist manner. He made such rapid strides that by 1912 he was becoming recognized as the leading Cubist painter apart from the founders of the movement, Picasso and Braque. His work stood out at the Section d'Or exhibition in that year, attracting the attention of collectors and dealers (Gertrude Stein was among those who bought his paintings and Kahnweiler gave him a contract). In 1913–14 he developed a personal version of Synthetic Cubism, in which papier collé played an important part. He said that he conceived of his paintings as ‘flat, coloured architecture’ and his methods of visual analysis were more systematic than those of Picasso and Braque. His subjects were almost all taken from his immediate surroundings (mainly still lifes, with occasional landscapes and portraits), but he began with the image he had in mind rather than with an object in the external world: ‘I try to make concrete that which is abstract…Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder, but I make a bottle—a particular bottle—out of a cylinder.’ In 1919 Gris had his first major one-man exhibition (at the Galerie de l'Effort Moderne in Paris), but in the following year he suffered a serious attack of pleurisy and from then on his health was poor; for this reason he spent much of his time in the south of France. In this last period of his life his style became more painterly (Violin and Fruit Dish, 1924, Tate, London). Apart from paintings, his work included polychrome sculpture, book illustrations, and set and costume designs for Diaghilev. He wrote a few essays on his aesthetic ideas and a collection of his letters, edited and translated by Douglas Cooper, was published in 1956.

Juan Gris , 1887-1927, Spanish cubist painter, whose original name was José Victoriano González. After studying in Madrid he settled in Paris in 1906, where he held his first exhibition at the Salon des Indépendents of 1912. Gris played an important role in the development of synthetic cubism . His paintings are composed of simple forms; at first they reflected an architectonic logic of design, but later they were given a more sumptuous, decorative treatment. The majority of his works are still-life oils and collages. Gris also painted several portraits. The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, has several still lifes.

Bibliography: See his letters (ed. and tr. by D. Cooper, 1956); catalog by J. T. Soby (1958); D. H. Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His Life and Work (rev. ed. 1969); M. Rosenthal, Juan Gris (1983).

Gris, Juan (1887–1927) Spanish painter. In 1906 Gris settled in Paris and, with Picasso and Braque, became a leading exponent of synthetic cubism, as seen in Homage to Picasso (1912). Later works include collages, architectonic paintings, stage sets and costumes for Diaghilev.