Juan Gris Spanish Cubist Oil For Auction at 888 Auctions on Oct 10, 2019

Oil on cardboard, framed. Featuring a cubist composition. Signed Juan Gris on the upper left corner. Label affixed to verso inscribed Juan Gris Nature Morte. Stamped 90 L on verso. Inscribed 761 in pencil on verso. Attributed to Juan Gris (1887-1927, Spanish). 39 x 28.5 cm (15 x 11.25 inches). PROVENANCE: Private European collection

Juan Gris (1887-1927) was a Spanish painter and early pioneer of Cubism whose work integrated rich color harmonies into compositions of angular shapes. Alongside Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Fernand Léger, Gris challenged the traditional rendering of space and volume in painting. His hallmark technique of breaking up pictorial space through concentric angles is evident in his Portrait of Pablo Picasso (1912). “Cubism is moving around an object to seize several successive appearances. Which fused in a single image, reconstitute it in time,” the artist once explained.

Born José Victoriano González-Pérez on March 23, 1887 in Madrid, Spain, he studied engineering at the School of Arts and Sciences in Madrid before moving to Paris in 1906. Like other avant-garde artists in his circle, Gris similarly went on to design inventive ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes dance company. Gris died at the age of 40 from renal failure on May 11, 1927 in Paris, France.

Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.