Biographies

Born in Madrid, Juan Gris started to produce drawings at a very young age before studying at the escuela de Artes Manufacturas in view of becoming an engineer. He however deserted that school in 1904 preferring to embark on a career as a painter.

He first earned his living as an illustrator for many dailies and periodicals while studying painting with an academic painter. Gathering his meagre resources and with the help of his sister he decided to go to Paris in 1906 and rented a studio at the famed “Bateau-Lavoir” where he met and befriended Picasso.

"Carafe, verre et compotier", oil on canvas 45x55 cm, 1918

It was only in 1912 that he exhibited his works for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris et a few weeks later at the “Section d'Or”. He then had several solo-exhibitions while the first posthumous exhibition of his works took place in 1928 at the Galerie Simon in Paris. Several retrospective exhibitions were held, notably in 1955 in Bern, in 1956 at the Venice Biennial, in 1985 in Madrid, in 1992 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and in 1998 in Marseille, southern
France.

Gris witnessed the birth of Cubism with much enthusiasm and was immediately considered as one of the main exponents of that movement. Still, he regarded Cubism as a solution to the problems he wanted to tackle and expressed his own personality showing much rectitude in his approach to Cubism.

He viewed Cubism as a descriptive and analytical method so as to show objects in various angles. In 1914 his style evolved toward synthetic Cubism finding therefore more freedom in his attempt to give a new definition to painting and sculpture.

Gris was probably one of the rare artists who stuck to the ideals of Cubism while Picasso and Braque progressively swerved toward abstraction. He was notably afraid of producing adverse effects vis-à-vis viewers fearing their misunderstanding regarding what he wanted to show. “I do not want to create monsters”, he once said.

He thus always tried to eschew distortions that would be considered as controversial and strove to go from abstraction to reality. “Cézanne showed a bottle as a cylinder. On my part, I am going from the cylinder to create a bottle. Cézanne went toward architecture whereas I depart from it, “he was quoted as saying.

Gris used to arrange colours to create objects composing for example with black and white and arranging white to suggest paper et black to create a shadow.
In that sense, he was rather a poet though his painting was considered as cold during many years. Picasso loathed at Gris at a certain time making nasty and unworthy comments about his work whereas the latter always tried to master all the aspects of Cubism. In fact, his main handicap was to have followed in Pïcasso's footstep who had launched Cubism with Braque in 1907.

Gris was also somewhat guilty of being a wee bit too modest and did not have the temperament of Picasso to impose himself on the art scene while certain critics felt he had imitated Braque from 1921 whereas he was no longer in accordance with the latter at that time.

Gris's best works were however produced between 1915 and 1920 and today he is progressively considered as one of the greatest Cubist masters especially as there is much unity in his work. Gris said his painting might be bad though he personally felt it was great. Daniel Kahnweiler, one of his agents together with Rosenberg and Clovis Sagot, had much esteem for him while several collectors such as Gertrude Stein, Alphone Kann or Alfred Flechtheim bought many of his works.

Gris produced décor was the Russian Ballets of Serge Diaghilev as well as some Cubist sculptures and engravings during his career beside illustrating books between 1915 and 1924.