GRIS, Juan (Madrid, 1887 – Boulogne-sur-Seine, 1927)
José Victoriano González, who would later decide to sign his works as Juan Gris, was born on 23 March 1887 in Madrid. After a relatively short period of mathematical studies at the Escuela de Arte e Industrias (Madrid), Gris decided to make a change in his career and began to attend the art classes of the painter José Moreno Carbonero (1860–1942). As soon as 1903 Gris had a series of drawings, inspired from the German Jugendstil, published by the magazines Renacimiento Latino and Blanco y Negro. In 1906 Gris moved to Paris where he rapidly name in contact with the Parisian avant-garde milieu. His old friend Daniel Vázquez Diaz first introduced him to Picasso, Braque, Apollinaire and Jacob. Before settling in France the artist published nearly 70 illustrations in the book Alma America, Poemas Indoespañoles written by the Peruvian poet José Santos Chocano. Between 1906 and 1914, Gris extensively worked as an illustrator, and mostly as a caricaturist, for a number of publications both in France and in Spain, including Le Témoin, Le Charivari, L’Assiette au Beurre, and Papitu (Barcelona). Gris specifically turned to painting around 1910 following the Cubist experiments of Braque and Picasso. Although little is known about his first works it is clear that Gris’ endeavon was aimed at exploring the possibilities of Cubist representation while maintaining the identity of the picture’s subject. On the contrary, Braque and Picasso were more interested in destabilising the structure of the object with the resulting deconstruction of its established nature. The painter’s earlier show was organised by Clovis Sagot in 1912 and some of the works exhibited there, such as Hommage à Picasso or Portrait of Picasso (Art Institute of Chicago), were also displayed at the Salon des Indépendants that same year. In 1913 the art dealer Kahnweiler offered Gris a contract, allowing the artist to make further experiments, including his celebrated papiers collés (collages) and the series of Musical Instruments such as The Guitar (1913, Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne). During the war period Gris continued to produce a lavish number of Cubist paintings and because of Kahnweiler’s exile to Switzerland, he provisionally sold his works through the mediation of Léonce Rosenberg but in 1920 resumed his contract with the former. During the 1920s Gris extensively collaborated with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes on a number of productions, such as the 1922–24 Les Tentations de la Bergère for which he designed both costumes and sets. By that same period the artist’s health started to gradually deteriorate, beginning with pleurisy in 1920. Noteworthy among his last works are the illustrations for Salacrou’s Le Casseur d’Assiettes (1924) and Tzara’s Mouchoir de Nuages (1925). Juan Gris died at Boulogne-sur-Seine on 24 January 1927.
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