Juan Gris

Spanish painter

• Born: March 23, 1887
• Birthplace: Madrid, Spain
• Died: May 11, 1927
• Place of death: Boulogne-sur-Seine, France

Despite a relatively short professional career, Gris was one of the founders and most influential artists of the cubist movement in art in the early twentieth century.

Early Life

José Victoriano González, later known as Juan Gris (huahn grees), was born in Madrid, Spain, the thirteenth of fourteen children. His father, Gregorio Gonzalez, was a prosperous businessman. According to one of his sisters, he began drawing around the age of six or seven. In 1902, Gris was enrolled at Madrid’s Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas (School of Arts and Industries), where he studied mathematics, engineering, science, and physics. He soon developed an interest in painting. He began to send sketches to the Madrid papers Blanco y Negro, Madrid Comico, and others, though he was paid little. In 1904, he entered the studio of José Moreno Carbonero to study painting, but the experience was not a happy one. Carbonero was later to tutor Salvador Dalí. Gris also began to associate with foreign painters in Madrid during this period.

In 1906, Gris illustrated Alma América, Poemas indo-españoles (1906) by the Peruvian poet José Santos Chocano; one illustration is signed “J. Gris,” the first known use by the artist of his pseudonym. Gris’s future style is evoked in a startling manner in this early work. There is considerable speculation as to why he chose the pseudonym “Gris” (in both French and Spanish it means “gray”) for his work; the most frequent theory is that he chose to exhibit his independence from his background and that the name Gris seemed most clearly neutral. While Gris continued to contribute to Madrid’s journals, he decided that his artistic development necessitated a move to Paris.

Life’s Work

Gris was nineteen when he decided to go to Paris, and he had sold all of his possessions to be able to do so. He arrived in Paris nearly penniless in September, 1906, having only sixteen francs in his pockets. A friend, a painter from his Madrid days named Daniel Vasquez Diaz, immediately introduced him to a fellow Spaniard, Pablo Picasso, and he moved into the same building at 13 rue Ravignand, a studio he was not to abandon completely until 1922. Gris had not done his military service prior to his departure, and this would later hamper his efforts to obtain a passport for foreign travel.

Gris met many of Paris’s literary and artistic avant-garde, including Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, André Salmon, Georges Braque, and Maurice Raynal. A new artistic spirit was evolving, one that combined sources as diverse as African art and French poetry. Picasso, six years older than Gris, was to serve as a sort of big brother, and Gris was both to acknowledge his debt and to admire his fellow Spaniard for the rest of his life. While he carried on his work for the illustrated papers, he began to work on projects that followed his own interests. It was nearly four years before Gris decided to exhibit his paintings.

Gris was quite poor during the next six years; his major source of income was selling satirical drawings to French and Spanish publications. In the winter of 1907, Gris was befriended by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who opened a gallery and later represented Gris. Besides rough drawings and some still-life drawings, only one painting, Siphon and Bottles, dated 1910, remains from these early years. It seems likely that Gris destroyed much of his work done before 1910; he would later throw out paintings that dissatisfied him and request his agent and wife to destroy all preparatory sketches. He began to paint in the cubist style in 1911-1912. Gris’s works from this period have an analytical style and metallic sheen; one work from this period capturing these characteristics is his Portrait of Picasso (1912). Gris was totally absorbed in his work during this period; Max Jacob later related that Gris said, “I only stroke dogs with my left hand so that if I am bitten I shall still have my right hand to paint with.”

In April, 1909, Lucie Belin, Gris’s mistress, had a son, who was named Georges Gonzalez Gris; after Gris and Belin separated, the child was sent to Madrid, where he was reared by relatives. Georges did not return to Paris until 1926, at his father’s request, to continue his studies in chemical engineering.

In the spring of 1910, Gris exhibited his cubist paintings at the Salon des Indépendants. Later that year, his paintings were included in a “Section d’Or” society exhibition, which included Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, and Louis Dunnoyer de Segonzac, all cubist painters. Shortly thereafter Gris’s works began to be bought by collectors, and his financial difficulties eased considerably.

In January, 1912, Gris had his first exhibition at Sagot’s gallery. In September, Gris began to experiment with the papier collé (collage) technique, following the earlier efforts of Picasso and Braque. Later that month, he signed with Kahnweiler for the agent to represent his work, which meant that he no longer participated in salon exhibitions. Kahnweiler wrote, “I became convinced that in this painter, whose development I had been watching for some time, I had in fact discovered an artist as great as I believed” The friendship would last until Gris’s death.

In August, 1913, Gris and his new wife, Josette Herpin, moved to Ceret, where a number of other cubist painters had taken up residence. They remained there until November. While at Ceret, Gris further experimented with the papier collé technique. Throughout 1914, Gris worked almost exclusively in the papier collé method. The same year, Gris spent time with Henri Matisse at Collioure. With the outbreak of World War I in August, 1914, the cubist movement was dispersed. Kahnweiler had returned to Germany the previous month, because of persecution. Many artists, including Apollinaire, Braque, André Derain, Léger, and Raynal, entered military service. Gris’s finances were hard hit by Kahnweiler’s absence, and Gertrude Stein sent him two hundred francs. Attempts by other dealers to represent Gris’s works fell through because of Gris’s loyalty to Kahnweiler. Gris returned to Paris in 1915 and remained there until the end of the war.

During the war years Gris’s style continued to evolve. His cubist works became more ordered, with architectural elements in their design becoming more prominent. Gris himself referred to his paintings from this period as “flat, coloured architecture.” In 1917, Gris produced his only sculpture, Harlequin, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Cubism began to decline as a style after World War I; in 1920, Gris participated in the last exhibition by cubists as a group, the Salon des Indépendants. That autumn Gris’s health began to falter, and he wintered at Bandol. While at Bandol in April, 1921, Gris was contacted by Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of Les Ballets Russes, to do sets and costumes for an upcoming production. Gris went to Monte Carlo to discuss the project, but it was later abandoned. Diaghilev and Gris later collaborated on several ballets, among them La Colombe, Les Tentations de la Bergère, and L’Éducation Manquée. His last work for Diaghilev was an architectural work for a Red Cross fěte held on May 28, 1924.

Gris also strove to reveal his theories behind his art. In 1921, he attempted to explain his attempts to inject warmth into the rigid, mathematical elements of cubist style by stating, “I consider that the architectural element is mathematics, the abstract side; I want to humanize it.” Despite his adherence to cubist ideals, he saw himself squarely within the Western European classical tradition, remarking, “I cannot break away from the Louvre. Mine is the method of all times, the method used by the old masters.” On May 15, 1924, he read “Les Possibilités de la Peinture” (on the possibilities of painting) to the Society of Philosophic and Scientific Studies at the Sorbonne. The paper was later widely published in German, French, Spanish, and English journals, and Gris became widely known.

Gris was constantly ill during the last two years of his life. While stoically bearing his suffering, Gris was forced by his ill health to move frequently, in search of a climate more conducive to his being. Gris died on the evening of May 11, 1927, from uremia. He was buried two days later in Boulogne-sur-Seine. Among the mourners were his son Georges, Jacques Lipchitz, Raynal, Kahnweiler, and Picasso.

Significance

Despite his death at an early age, Gris belongs to a select group of artists who created and refined cubism, an artistic style that echoes through the present. Gris’s entire painted output was completed between his twenty-third and fortieth birthdays. Unlike Picasso, who quickly moved on from the cubist style after initial experimentation, Gris continued to create in that genre until his death. Along with Picasso, Braque, and Léger, Gris is considered one of the giants of the cubist style. While cubism lasted less than a decade as an avant-garde style practiced by many artists, its influence has continued to make itself felt. Cubism’s influence was felt in fields beyond painting. For Gris’s ability there was an increasing admiration; Gertrude Stein, a friend of both Gris and Picasso, called Gris “a perfect painter.”

Shortly after Gris’s death, Picasso was standing in front of one of Gris’s canvases and observed, “It’s grand to see a painter who knew what he was doing.” Gris himself had a very clear notion of what he was trying to achieve in his art, once observing, “I start with an abstraction in order to arrive at a true fact. Mine is an art of synthesis, of deduction.” Traces of his style can be seen everywhere from the graffiti in the New York subways to remnants of gigantic Soviet propaganda placards.

Bibliography

Antliff, Mark, and Patricia Leighten. Cubism and Culture. London: Thames & Hudson, 2001. A history of cubism and its cultural context, with discussion of Gris and his art.

Cooper, Douglas, and Gary Tinterow. The Essential Cubism: Braque, Picasso, and Their Friends, 1907-1920. New York: George Braziller, 1984. This is a catalog with commentary on a cubist exhibition held at the Tate Gallery in London in the spring of 1983. It is a very useful work for setting Gris in the context of his contemporaries; the reproductions are excellent, with many in color.

Gayo-Nuño, Juan Antonio. Juan Gris. Translated by Kenneth Lyons. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975. This translation of a Spanish work contains not only numerous black-and-white and color reproductions of Gris’s work but also an extensive text and annotated bibliography on Gris.

Gris, Juan. “On the Possibilities of Painting.” Parts 1/2. Transatlantic Review 1 (June/July, 1924): 75-79, 482-488. An explanation by Gris of the concepts involved in his art, from color to aesthetic technique. Gris concludes that “the essence of painting is the expression of certain relationships between the painter and the outside world,” and that a painting is the “intimate association of these relationships” on the painted surface.

Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry. Juan Gris: His Life and Work. Translated by Douglas Cooper. New York: Curt Valentin, 1947. The English translation of Kahnweiler’s work is a very useful source on Gris. The author represented the artist’s work in Paris and was a close personal friend of the artist.

Rosenthal, Mark. Juan Gris. New York: Abbeville Press, 1983. A catalog and critique with reproductions published on the occasion of an exhibition of Gris’s work displayed in Berkeley, California; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. The text contains a fairly standard biography of Gris but includes many color reproductions of his work that are hard to find elsewhere. A useful bibliography of writing by Gris is included as well as a listing of works illustrated by him and monographs covering aspects of his life.

Soby, James Thrall. Juan Gris. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1958. This work was published to coincide with an exhibition of Gris’s work held at the Museum of Modern Art in the spring of 1958. Most of Gris’s major works are represented, and the text is very informative, though rather sparse on the painter’s early years in Spain.