Juan Gris

José Victoriano González-Pérez, known to the world as Juan Gris, was born in Madrid on 23 March 1887. Though Spanish by birth, he spent nearly all of his working life in France, where he became a key figure in Cubism. His paintings are counted among the most recognizable of that movement.

Gris studied engineering in Madrid from 1902 to 1904, while also contributing drawings to local periodicals. He then trained under the academic painter José Moreno Carbonero from 1904 to 1905. It was in 1905 that he adopted the name Juan Gris. In 1909, his wife Lucie Belin gave birth to their only child, Georges Gonzalez-Gris. The family lived at the Bateau-Lavoir in Paris from 1909 to 1911. Around 1912, Gris met Charlotte Augusta Fernande Herpin, called Josette, who became his second companion and unofficial wife; they lived together at the Bateau-Lavoir from late 1913 or early 1914 until 1922.

After selling everything he owned, Gris moved to Paris in 1906. There he befriended poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, and artists Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Jean Metzinger. He contributed darkly humorous illustrations to several journals, including the anarchist satirical magazine *L’Assiette au Beurre*, as well as *Le Rire*, *Le Charivari*, and *Le Cri de Paris*. In Paris, he followed the lead of Metzinger and his fellow countryman Pablo Picasso.

Gris began painting seriously in 1911, abandoning his work as a satirical cartoonist. At this time he developed his own Cubist style. According to John Richardson, Metzinger’s 1911 painting *Le goûter (Tea Time)* convinced Gris of the importance of mathematics in painting. He first exhibited in 1912 at the Salon des Indépendants, with a work titled *Hommage à Pablo Picasso*. Art historian Peter Brooke notes that Gris appeared with two styles: one featuring a clear grid structure reminiscent of Metzinger’s work, and another where the grid is implied through heavy, often triangular shading. Both styles are distinguished from Picasso and Braque by their rational, measurable quality. Although Gris saw Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein wrote that Picasso wished Gris away.

In 1912, Gris showed work at the first declared group exhibition of Cubism worldwide, the Exposició d’art cubista at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, as well as at 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. That same year, he signed a contract giving Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler exclusive rights to his work. Initially painting in the Analytical Cubism style—a term Gris himself later coined—he shifted after 1913 toward Synthetic Cubism, becoming a steadfast interpreter of it and making extensive use of papier collé (collage). Unlike the nearly monochromatic Cubist works of Picasso and Braque, Gris used bright, harmonious colors in daring combinations, influenced by Matisse. His preference for clarity and order influenced the Purist style of Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, and made him an important figure in the post-war “return to order” movement. In 1915, Amedeo Modigliani painted his portrait. In November 1917, Gris created one of his few sculptures, the polychrome plaster *Harlequin*.

From late 1916 through 1917, Gris’s works became more geometrically simplified, blurring the line between objects and setting. This “Crystal Cubism” period is evident in *Woman with Mandolin, after Corot* (September 1916) and *Portrait of Josette Gris* (October 1916). The clear geometric framework controls the finer elements, with small planes of faces becoming part of a unified whole. The abstract armature served as the starting point for his compositions. This geometric structure is already palpable in *Still Life before an Open Window, Place Ravignan* (June 1915). By 1919 and 1920, artists and critics began to write conspicuously about this synthetic approach and its importance in advanced Cubism.

In 1924, Gris designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. He articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925, delivering his definitive lecture *Des possibilités de la peinture* at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major exhibitions of his work took place at Galerie Simon in Paris and Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923, and at Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925.

After October 1925, Gris suffered frequent 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. He was survived by his wife Josette and his son.