Juan Gris

Juan Gris - Political and artistic revolutionary

Juan Gris was born José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez on 23 March 1887 in Madrid. Although he grew up with thirteen siblings, his uncle recognised his artistic talent early on and granted him painting tuition. From 1902 to 1904, Juan Gris studied at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid, after which he took further direction from his good friend José Moreno Carbonero, a history painter who later also taught Salvador Dali. Gris initially earned a living as an illustrator, and made various drawings to accompany the political poems of his friend, the Chilean revolutionary José Santos Chocano. For the first time, he signed his works with the name Juan Gris. In 1906, the young artist left Madrid for Paris where he met his fellow countryman Picasso. The exceptional artists cultivated an extremely fruitful collaboration and undertook several study trips. Under Picasso’s influence, Gris turned back to painting and dedicated himself to analytical Cubism. 

Formative figure of Cubism

Juan Gris had the opportunity to exhibit fifteen of his early works with the former clown and later art dealer Clovis Sagot, including the Cubist influenced work, Houses in Paris. Of particular significance was his acquaintance with the German art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler who signed him under contract in 1912 and took over the organisation and financing of his exhibitions. In 1913, Gris took the step to synthetic Cubism as a consequence of his examination of the works of his friends Picasso and Braque. He now included three-dimensional elements such as shards or paper in his paintings – the paper collés were now formed, an early form of collage. During a sojourn in Southern France in 1914, Gris met the sculptor Henri Matisse, whose example and influence helped him to solidify his own pictorial language. IN 1916, Gris went through his so-called architectonic phase whereby he concentrated more on form than colour, but it was the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz who encouraged Gris to consider sculpture. Even as an established painter, Gris often produced book illustrations and created costumes and decorations for the theatre – the opera La Colombe by Charles Gounod for example.

The imagined picture

Juan Gris worked not only as a painter but also as an art theorist. In 1924, he subsumed his important theoretical concepts in the discourse ‘Des possibilities de la peinture’ which he gave at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1925, he laid out his view of Cubism in the essay ‘Chez les cubistes’, noting that it initially had been nothing more than ‘a new way of representing the world’. The theoretical defence of his practical work was important for Juan Gris as he wished to convey his thoughts and reflections to his surroundings and to posterity. That same year, the artist became severely ill, and his continuing deterioration prevented his from pursuing his artistic activities. 

Juan Gris died from uraemia on 11 May 1927 in Bologne-sur-Seine at the age of 40.