040501 Cubism Art Paintings

Juan Gris, Spanish (1887-1927)

José Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) González-Pérez, better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive.

Gris was born in Madrid and later studied engineering at the Madrid School of Arts and Sciences. There, from 1902 to 1904, he contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905, he studied painting with the academic artist José Moreno Carbonero. It was in 1905 that José Victoriano González adopted the more distinctive name Juan Gris.

In 1909, Lucie Belin (1891–1942)—Gris' wife—gave birth to Georges Gonzalez-Gris (1909–2003), the artist's only child. The three lived at the Bateau-Lavoir, 13 Rue Ravignan, Paris, from 1909 to 1911. In 1912 Gris met Charlotte Augusta Fernande Herpin (1894–1983), also known as Josette. Late 1913 or early 1914 they lived together at the Bateau-Lavoir until 1922. Josette Gris was Juan Gris' second companion and unofficial wife.

In 1906, he moved to Paris and became friends with the poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and artists Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and Jean Metzinger. He submitted darkly humorous illustrations to journals such as the anarchist satirical magazine L'Assiette au Beurre, and also Le Rire, Le Charivari, and Le Cri de Paris. In Paris, Gris followed the lead of Metzinger and another friend and fellow countryman, Pablo Picasso.

Gris began to paint seriously in 1911 (when he gave up working as a satirical cartoonist), developing at this time a personal Cubist style. In A Life of Picasso, John Richardson writes that Jean Metzinger's 1911 work, Le goûter (Tea Time), persuaded Juan Gris of the importance of mathematics in painting. Gris exhibited for the first time at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants (a painting entitled Hommage à Pablo Picasso).

"He appears with two styles", writes art historian Peter Brooke, "In one of them a grid structure appears that is clearly reminiscent of the Goûter and of Metzinger's later work in 1912." In the other, Brooke continues, "the grid is still present but the lines are not stated and their continuity is broken. Their presence is suggested by the heavy, often triangular, shading of the angles between them... Both styles are distinguished from the work of Picasso and Braque by their clear, rational and measurable quality." Although Gris regarded Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein wrote in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that "Juan Gris was the only person whom Picasso wished away".

In 1912, Gris exhibited at the Exposició d'art cubista, Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, the first declared group exhibition of Cubism worldwide; the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin; the Salon de la Société Normande de Peinture Moderne in Rouen; and the Salon de la Section d'Or in Paris. Gris, in that same year, signed a contract that gave Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler exclusive rights to his work.

At first Gris painted in the style of Analytical Cubism, a term he himself later coined, but after 1913 he began his conversion to Synthetic Cubism, of which he became a steadfast interpreter, with extensive use of papier collé or, collage. Unlike Picasso and Braque, whose Cubist works were practically monochromatic, Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in daring, novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse. Gris exhibited with the painters of the Puteaux Group in the Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912. His preference for clarity and order influenced the Purist style of Amédée Ozenfant and Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), and made Gris an important exemplar of the post-war "return to order" movement. In 1915 he was painted by his friend, Amedeo Modigliani. In November 1917 he made one of his few sculptures, the polychrome plaster Harlequin.

Gris's works from late 1916 through 1917 exhibit a greater simplification of geometric structure, a blurring of the distinction between objects and setting, between subject matter and background. The oblique overlapping planar constructions, tending away from equilibrium, can best be seen in Woman with Mandolin, after Corot (September 1916) and in its epilogue, Portrait of Josette Gris (October 1916; Museo Reina Sofia).

The clear-cut underlying geometric framework of these works seemingly controls the finer elements of the compositions; the constituent components, including the small planes of the faces, become part of the unified whole. Though Gris certainly had planned the representation of his chosen subject matter, the abstract armature serves as the starting point.

The geometric structure of Juan Gris's Crystal period is already palpable in Still Life before an Open Window, Place Ravignan (June 1915; Philadelphia Museum of Art). The overlapping elemental planar structure of the composition serves as a foundation to flatten the individual elements onto a unifying surface, foretelling the shape of things to come.

In 1919 and particularly 1920, artists and critics began to write conspicuously about this 'synthetic' approach, and to assert its importance in the overall scheme of advanced Cubism.

In 1924, he designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Ballets Russes.

Gris articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925. He delivered his definitive lecture, Des possibilités de la peinture, at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major Gris exhibitions took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923 and at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925.

After October 1925, Gris was frequently ill with bouts of uremia and cardiac problems. He died of kidney failure in Boulogne-sur-Seine (Paris) on 11 May 1927, at the age of 40, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges.

We work hard to ensure that you get your art print in perfect conditions. If you are not happy with your purchase, for any reason, you can return it back to us for a refund. All what we ask is that you email us within seven (7) days of receipt of your art print that you wish to return your order. As soon as we receive your notice we will contact you to give you the return address along with all the information you require to mail the art print back to us for a refund.

We regret however for not accepting return of an art print that has been stretched, cropped, not in good condition or altered somehow after purchase.

To ensure that we will receive the returned art print, a traceable door-to-door courier must be used. We regretfully do not reimburse the return shipping charges UNLESS the return is due to a defect in quality or was damaged during transportation.

In such a case, where your order has arrived in unsatisfactory conditions, please take at the same date of receipt digital photos of your damaged product along with the shipping container (the box, tube, envelop, etc...) and send us the photos by email. Once we confirm your claim we will contact you to give you the return address along with the information you require to return the art print to us (FREE return) for a refund or replacement.

110% PRICE MATCH GUARANTEE

We at wall-art-gallery.com take pride in offering the lowest prices and best service available in our industry. We are confident that our prices are hard to compete. But even though, let us assume that it happened!

So…

If you find the same item at the same conditions for a lower price anywhere online, we will beat it and heap on an extra 10% off your purchase. For example, if our price is $100 and the competitor’s price is $90, we will match the $90 and provide an additional $10 off (10% of the $100 price difference), meaning that we will refund a total of $20.

We want you to rest assured that you are getting the absolute best price for the product you order.

WE ALSO PRICE MATCH OURSELVES!

If you find that our own website has a lower price for the same item you have ordered within six months of your purchase date (but not under promotional offers or special discounts) we will refund the difference as well.

Prior to requesting our price match policy, please make sure that the following terms apply:

* The 110% price match guarantee is valid up to 15 days after the date of your purchase,
* The 110% price match applies to the final product price including taxes and shipping charges,
* The artwork must be in stock on the competitor’s website and for sale online,
* The lower price must be valid and verifiable online at the time you request a price match,
* The product must be identical in brand name, size, weight and quantity,
* The product must be under money back guarantee,
* The artwork is printed on premium 100% cotton canvas, not on polyester or mixed texture,
* The competitor’s website is not a discounter or auction website (ie; ebay, overstock, etc..)

Promotional offers such as limited time offers, bundle offers, rebates, coupons, special discounts, refurbished items, used items, clearance, close out, buy one get one free and the like, are not eligible for price matching

If you believe your item qualifies, please contact us with the following attachments, and we’ll process the credit accordingly:

* The competitor’s product page URL link,
* Screenshot of the product,
* Screenshot of the product page from the competitor’s web site with the final price and full product details visible,

This artwork is in public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. If you’re a copyright owner of this artwork, or his/her legal representative, and you don’t agree that this artwork is public domain, please contact us.

The colors of the printing material, as well as the imprint might differ somewhat from the image on your device's monitor. Depending on the settings of your screen and the nature of the surface, not all colors will be printed as realistically as the digital version.

Furthermore, some pigments of the print products, as well as the printing may diverge somewhat from the representation on the device's screen.

Unlike almost all our competitors, and in spite of its cost impact, we go on printing to scale maintaining the proportions of the original painting as the Artist wanted it to be. In some cases however there might be around plus/minus ±1% tolerance in average, and maximum ±5% in very, very few cases.