Background
Juan Gris was born on March 23, 1887 in Madrid, Spain. He was a son of Gregorio Gonzalez, a paper manufacturer, and Isabel Perez.
Juan Gris was born on March 23, 1887 in Madrid, Spain. He was a son of Gregorio Gonzalez, a paper manufacturer, and Isabel Perez.
During the period from 1902 till 1904, Juan attended Madrid School of Arts and Manufactures. Since 1904 to 1905, he studied painting under the guidance of José Moreno Carbonero.
In 1906, Juan Gris moved to Paris, where he befriended Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso and others. In 1910, Gris started to paint seriously, contributing humorous illustrations to journals, such as L'Assiette au beurre, Le Charivari, and Le Cri de Paris at the same time. During the early 1910s, his work followed the austere monochromatic style of Analytic Cubism and moved in the direction of Synthetic Cubism — a subsequent phase, distinguished by a broader, bolder use of color and a collage-like approach to composition — from 1914 onward.
In 1912, Gris held his first exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, the Salon de la Société Normande de Peinture Moderne in Rouen and the Salon de la Section d'Or in Paris. The same year, he signed a contract, that gave a German art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler the exclusive right to sell his work. After several years of financial difficulties in Paris, the arrangement gave him greater stability and allowed his work to reach a broader and more influential audience. Some time later, in 1919, Gris held his first major solo exhibition at Rosenberg's Galerie l'Effort Moderne in Paris.
Juan Gris painted prolifically during and after World War I, though in 1920 he caught pleurisy, a lung inflammation, then often confused with tuberculosis. In an attempt to recuperate, he spent the winter at Bandol, on the southeastern coast of France. While there, he spent time with a Russian ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, and the two discussed ideas about staging and costumes for upcoming productions. Their conversations eventually yielded a full collaboration and during the period from 1922 to 1924, Gris designed costumes and sets for the Ballet Russes.
Juan Gris achieved the peak of popularity in the mid-1920's. During that time, he also articulated most of his aesthetic theories. In 1924, Gris delivered his definitive lecture, "Des possibilités de la peinture", at the Sorbonne. His most important 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.
Juan Gris established himself as one of the most distinctive figures in Cubism during his relatively short life. His work "Nature morte à la nappe à carreaux" was sold for $57.1 million.
Today, the painter’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and others.
Quotations:
"Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought. It is possible to invent a technique or a manner independently, but one cannot invent the whole complexity of a state of mind."
"I prefer the emotion that corrects the rule."
"I make a composition with a white and a black, and make adjustments when the white has become a paper and the black a shadow."
Juan was married to Josette Gris. The couple had one son — Georges Gris.
