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Born: 1887
Died: 1927
Summary of Juan Gris
Juan Gris, a favourite artist of Gertrude Stein and the only Cubist with enough skill to frighten Pablo Picasso, expanded on the early Cubist underpinnings and led the movement in new directions. Juan Gris Gris, a member of the Parisian avant-garde art community, embraced Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque’s severely fractured image spaces, giving his work a strong, graphic quality. As an artist, Gris’s paintings have a sleek, almost commercial look, as well as sharp design features, which set them apart from the competition.
Picasso and Braque revelled in upsetting the established order of things in painting, while Gris’s primary goal was to appeal to the senses. “I prefer the emotion that corrects the rule” the artist said. The avant-garde style was popularised despite Picasso’s unconventional use of picture space. His well-balanced compositions, vivid colours, and classic themes all contributed to its success.
Picasso and Braque both used newspapers and advertising as inspiration for their art. Although they usually snipped these parts into shards, he does it with care, as if to keep them true to the originals’ look and feel. He is a precursor to Dada and Pop artists like Marcel Duchamp, Stuart Davis, and Andy Warhol by elevating common culture to the level of high art.
Poets, choreographers, singers, and visual artists like him paved the way for future generations of creatives. Interdisciplinary cooperation was an important concept for him, as shown by his costumes for the Ballet Russes.
Childhood
José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez, the man who would become Juan Gris, was born in Madrid in 1887. As the thirteenth of fourteen children, he spent 1902 to 1904 studying mathematics, physics, and mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas de Madrid. He was an excellent student, but he disliked academic life because of the strict structure, so he went to art school instead.
Early Life
After graduating from high school, he pursued a career in painting under the guidance of renowned Madrid-based artist José Moreno Carbonero, who had previously trained artists such as Salvador Dal and Pablo Picasso. González-Pérez adopted the alias Juan Gris in 1905, while working under the direction of Carbonero. After his father’s death in 1906, he sold all he had and went to Paris, where he would spend the rest of his life. However, he lacked a passport and was unable to travel out of France or return to Spain since he had evaded the country’s military service requirement.
He worked as an artist and sarcastic cartoonist for a number of publications and periodicals throughout his early years in Paris. At Bateau Lavoir, he met Picasso, Braque, Matisse and the American writer Gertrude Stein. Stein would grow to be a lifetime fan and collector of his work for the rest of her life. He eventually left Montmartre for the United States. As he became closer to other artists, he was able to dedicate more time and effort to his own work. Analytic Cubism was subsequently described by Picasso and Braque as the use of monochromatic colour, grids, and the division of a subject into planes that resulted from his early work. Despite his obvious admiration for Picasso, Stein speculates that the elder man may have been intimidated by the younger man’s abilities, or just irritated by his flattery, as shown by Picasso’s desire to have Juan Gris removed from his life.
Despite their abysmal relationship, when his picture of his master was shown at the Salon des Independants in 1912, it received high praise from both other artists and reviewers. Also in the same year, he signed a contract granting the exclusive right to sell his work to German art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (who had previously worked with Picasso and Braque). With the agreement, he was able to reach a wider and more important audience after many years of financial problems in Paris.
Mid Life
The austere monochromatic style of Analytic Cubism dominated his early work, but from 1914 onwards, his work evolved in the direction of Synthetic Cubism, which included bolder use of colour and a collaged approach to arrangement. While Picasso and Braque influenced him, his later work is characterised by a shift away from shattered abstraction and the use of vibrant, harmonising hues in unusual pairings. His work from this time is particularly notable.
The beginning of World War I affected his personal and professional life, as it did for many other artists at the period. Although he got financial assistance from Gertrude Stein, the war interrupted his commercial connection with Kahnweiler. He also spent time with Matisse at Collioure, France, near the Spanish border, where the artist had a studio. Leonce Rosenberg, another important modernist art collector, signed a new contract with him in 1916. Early on in his career, his work explores the relationship between objects and their shadows, reintroducing complex planar intersections, rich hues and textures to the canon of his practise.
He spent time in Touraine towards the conclusion of the war, where his French wife Josette was born. This is the only time in his career that he painted traditional peasant characters, which connects him to a wider movement among European painters during and after World War II. As the decade progressed, artists shifted their focus away from the avant-garde disruptions and reinterpretations of form that characterised the early 1910s, and toward more conventional methods and subject matter, which they addressed with a newfound enthusiasm.
Despite his struggles with sickness and money throughout the war, his fame continued to grow. Rosenberg’s Galerie l’Effort Moderne in Paris had his first big solo show in 1919, which was given to him as part of his prize. In the following year, he took part in the Salon des Independants’ last major exhibition of Cubist artists.
Late Life
Despite painting a lot both during and after the war, he became sick with pleurisy in 1920, which was mistaken for TB at the time. He went to Bandol, France’s southeast coast, for the winter in an effort to heal himself. There, he met Russian ballet mogul Sergei Diaghilev, with whom he planned future performances’ staging and costumes. Gris designed costumes and sets for the Ballet Russes between 1922 and 1924 as a result of their discussions.
In 1923 and 1925, the Galerie Simon in Paris, the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin, and the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf all had major exhibits of his work. His fame and reputation peaked in these years, and he would enjoy them for the rest of his life. In 1924, he delivered his lecture titled “Des possibilites de la peinture” at the Sorbonne, in which he articulated his ideas on art and aesthetics to an audience for the first time. To put it another way: He believes a painting is more than an accurate reproduction; it’s a creation and reinterpretation of reality by the artist.
He couldn’t enjoy his accomplishments for too long because of his deteriorating health. Boulogne-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, was the destination of his choice since he believed that a change in scenery would help his asthma. He was plagued by renal and heart problems from the end of 1925 forward. In 1927, he passed away from renal disease, leaving a wife and a small boy in his wake. At 40 years old, he was still a young man. The Life and Death of Juan Gris was written by Stein in reaction to Gris’s death, in which she calls him “a perfect painter.”
In the brief time he lived, he became one of Cubism’s most recognisable characters. With his layered compositions that show many perspectives on the same topic, his paintings challenge viewers to think outside the box in order to better understand the complexity of contemporary life. Aside from painting, Cubism had a significant impact on sculpture and architecture in the 20th century. Cubism’s free formal ideas influenced Surrealism, Dada, and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in the mid-20th century. The new visual language of Cubism is generally attributed to Picasso and Braque, although his unique interpretation of the technique inspired a wide range of painters, including Salvador Dal and Diego Rivera. This statement is from Dali’s book The Secret Life: “my first cubist paintings… were directly and intentionally influenced by Juan Gris.” Brand logos and newspaper typography pre-date the Pop Art movement, which included artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in the years after World War II.
Famous Art by Juan Gris
Portrait of Picasso
1912
Gris looked up to and admired Picasso. Picasso (the creator of Cubism) is shown in the Cubist manner in this picture, a thoughtful homage to his master. Picasso is literally bigger than life, with a palette at the ready (taking up most of the space on the canvas). He uses cold tones of blue, grey, and brown to create a prism of planes and geometric forms on the sitter’s face that resolve into the background’s parallel lines. Everything in this image seems to be moving. Despite the fact that he and his colleagues created a great deal of chaotic work, aspects of formal portraiture, such as the sitter’s legibility, symmetry, and a high-collared jacket (instead of a painter’s smock), show his regard for the subject. However, its departure from conventional depiction and attempt to portray the energy of contemporary life is fully in line with the Cubist goal.
Flowers
1914
A number of Cubist artists, such as Juan Gris, started using newspaper and wallpaper as collage materials during this time period. Floral arrangements depict the marble top vanity table on which a lady has her morning cup of coffee and the newspaper. Decorative wallpaper with stylised Art Nouveau orchids is reflected in a tilting oval mirror. Because of the use of newspaper and wallpaper (actual relics of modern life), we are forced to see the topic through a more contemporary perspective. Close observers were especially favoured by Gris, who enjoyed rewarding them with secret messages. The table conceals a second coffee cup and a pipe, indicating that the woman is not alone in the room.
Still Life with Checkered Tablecloth
1915
Consider this picture to be Flowers’ male counterpoint. A bottle of red wine, a bunch of grapes, coffee cups, a beer bottle, a large ceramic pot of preserves, coasters, and a French newspaper fill a tiny bistro table with a checkered tablecloth. There’s a secret message in there too, but this time it’s about his home Spain, with a bull’s head. The coffee cup at the bottom of the painting represents the snout, the beer bottle to the right represents the ear, and the coaster to the left represents the “bull’s eye” It serves as a sad reminder that, despite his inability to return to his own country, the artist never forgot about it. Still Life with Checkered Tablecloth shows his brilliance in furthering Cubism’s goal of making something new out of the connections between life and art by breaking the rules and combining “low art” (design elements such as the beer bottle logo and newspaper typography) with “high art” (the traditional still life elements).
The Man from Touraine
1918
After 1918, Gris’ work reflects a return to conventional ideals, themes, and forms, which is characteristic of post-World War I avant-garde painting. The artist spent the summer and autumn of 1918 in Touraine, the rural area where his wife Josette had grown up, and portrayed rural people dressed in their traditional attire. An archetype of the area’s residents, the elderly peasant is shown here rather than a particular person. His depiction of a farmer conveys a nostalgic mood and a desire for a long-lasting, conventional way of life in a turbulent and unpredictable period, and is more melancholy in tone than many of his other works in the Synthetic Cubist style.
Harlequin with a Guitar
1918
Popular among modernists who reexamined traditional sources following World War II, Harlequin was an archetypal figure from the 16th-century Italian commedia dell’arte who is known for acting on whims and emotions. He is also a trickster figure. Harlequin, a well-known character in the world of art, appears in about 40 of his pieces created between 1917 and 1925. The comical eyes and lips, as well as the bold graphic lines that follow the person and its clothing, show his training as an artist. There is a sense of comfort in the warm colour palette and familiar subject matter, which is slightly undercut by features like the knotholes, which seem to be slipping off the table, and Harlequin’s right hand’s fingers, which also serve as the guitar’s contour.
Woman with a Basket
1927
This enigmatic artwork by American artist Louise Bourgeois depicts a lady carrying a woven basket full of veggies while looking into an oval window or mirror. After World War I, European artists returned to classicism and conventional portrayal of form, as shown by the style of her hair, face, and clothes, which evokes Greek and Roman representations of women. While she isn’t a specific person like Harlequin or The Man from Touraine, she might be a harvest goddess or an artist’s inspiration. His early paintings include a still-life aspect like the basket she’s holding in this piece. There is a subtler message here, but one that is no less powerful: the oval behind the person (which might be a window or a mirror) is black, indicating that death is approaching. This work, one of his finest and most well-known, demonstrates that he was still in the prime of his career at the time of its completion.
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
Best for Students and a Huge Time Saver
- Juan Gris, a favourite artist of Gertrude Stein and the only Cubist with enough skill to frighten Pablo Picasso, expanded on the early Cubist underpinnings and led the movement in new directions.
- Juan Gris Gris, a member of the Parisian avant-garde art community, embraced Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque’s severely fractured image spaces, giving his work a strong, graphic quality.
- As an artist, Gris’s paintings have a sleek, almost commercial look, as well as sharp design features, which set them apart from the competition.
- Picasso and Braque revelled in upsetting the established order of things in painting, while Gris’s primary goal was to appeal to the senses. “
- I prefer the emotion that corrects the rule” the artist said.
- The avant-garde style was popularised despite Picasso’s unconventional use of picture space.
- His well-balanced compositions, vivid colours, and classic themes all contributed to its success.
- Picasso and Braque both used newspapers and advertising as inspiration for their art.
- Although they usually snipped these parts into shards, he does it with care, as if to keep them true to the originals’ look and feel.
- He is a precursor to Dada and Pop artists like Marcel Duchamp, Stuart Davis, and Andy Warhol by elevating common culture to the level of high art.
- Poets, choreographers, singers, and visual artists like him paved the way for future generations of creatives.
- Interdisciplinary cooperation was an important concept for him, as shown by his costumes for the Ballet Russes.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
