Glass and Checkerboard
Juan Gris
JUAN GRIS, c.1917. OIL ON WOOD.
At the age of 19, Juan Gris gave up everything. He sold his possessions and moved to Paris, ingratiating himself with Apollinaire, Matisse, Braque and, a little later, Picasso. He worked as a satirical cartoonist, painting rarely but learning throughout from those who surrounded him, falling deep into the cubist world they were creating. It was not until 1911, however, after seeing Metzinger’s work ‘Tea Time’, that he found a painting practice that spoke to him. Metzinger, for Gris, had unified mathematics and art on canvas, his cubist portrait less free flowing than Braque or Picasso but rigid in its grid structure. Gris seized upon this and developed his own style that he named Analytical Cubism. The subject’s deconstruction is more rigorous and scientific, as if each element has been carefully taken apart and rearranged. His paintings alight something primal, our desire for order and straight lines, yet also express a freeness and spiritual understanding of the world. Gris was amongst the most distinctive of the cubists for this marriage between the rational and the impossible.