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José Victoriano González Pérez, known as Juan Gris
(Madrid,1987 - Boulougne-sur-Seine, París, 1927)

Juan Gris is recognized as the purest representative of cubism, the movement that transformed the way reality was interpreted in the framework of modernity. But Juan Gris was also the painter who knew how to "think" cubism, and who gave this movement a classic character that made it a timeless esthetic form. Virtually his entire artistic life, which was short and shadowed by great personal difficulties, can be seen as related to cubism.

Originally called José Victoriano González, the painter was born in Madrid at number 4, Calle del Carmen to a family of merchants that was obliged to adapt to its progressively declining financial well-being. Of his youth in Madrid he recalled, above all, his frequent visits to the Prado Museum and his attendance at the Madrid School of Arts and Industries ( Escuela de Artes e Industrias de Madrid , later called the Escuela Industrial , or Industrial School). There he studied mathematics, physics, engineering and scientific methodology. In 1902 he began to contribute graphic art to periodicals, an activity that would be his main source of income for many years, even after he moved to Paris. His first published drawings appeared in the magazines Blanco y Negro and Madrid Cómico . In 1906 he created a series of modernist style illustrations for the book by Peruvian poet José Santos Chocano entitled Alma América . Poemas Indoespañoles (Soul America: Indo-Spanish poems). For the first time he signed one of these illustrations J. Gris, the pseudonym he would use for the rest of his life. This marked the beginning of his career as a book illustrator, an activity he would continue to pursue in Paris with an avant-garde approach, in collaboration with such poets and writers as P. Reverdy, Max Jacob and Tristan Tzara.

Toward the end of September 1906 he traveled to Paris, where he was received by his friend, the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz, who had encouraged him to make the trip. Gris soon moved into number 13, rue Ravignan. This was the famous Bateau Lavoir building where Picasso also lived and worked. There he witness the birth of cubism, and met poets and critics who were associated with this movement, such as Guillaume Apollinaire. Later, in 1907, he met critic Maurice Raynal, with whom he forged a close friendship, and the painter Georges Braque. In 1908 Gris met Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the great art dealer and champion of cubism, who visited the Bateau Lavoir to see Picasso. Thus began a relationship that would be highly significant in Juan Gris' creative and personal life.

1909 saw the birth of Georges González Gris, son of Juan Gris y and the young Frenchwoman Lucie Belin.

By 1910, the stage seemed to be set for Gris' irruption into painting, into modernity, into cubism. In fact, although he continued to draw caricatures for French and Spanish publications, it was at that time that he made his oldest conserved paintings. Little by little, his style evolved toward cubist geometrizing. But he would not fully embrace this movement until 1912, when the chaotic appearance of the analytic cubism practiced by Picasso and Braque in the neighboring studio began to give way to another, much more rational, ordered and clarifying approach called synthetic cubism.

1912 would be a signal year for Juan Gris: his exhibition in Clovis Sagot's gallery, and his presence in the Salon des Independents and in the Section d'Or in Paris meant his full public incorporation into the Parisian avant-garde. His participation at that time in the cubist show in Galerías Dalmau in Barcelona was also his first opportunity to exhibit in his native county. The article printed in Barcelona's La Publicitat , probably written by Junoy, was the first review devoted entirely to Gris. In addition, Gris signed a contract with art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler that afforded him a brief period of financial stability. Finally, Josette, who would accompany Gris until his death, settled in with him on the rue Ravignan.

In 1913 Guillaume Apollinaire published Méditations Esthéthiques . Les peintres Cubistes (Esthetic meditations: the cubist painters), in which he dedicated a section to Juan Gris. He described Gris as "the man who has meditated on everything modern, ...the painter who wishes to conceive only new structures, who would not want to draw or paint anything other than materially pure forms." Although this view of Gris as an intellectual hid a touch of contempt, probably inspired by Picasso, the fact is that Gris was already one of the most respected cubists, an appraisal that was borne out by the increasing appreciation shown for his work by the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg and the American writer and art collector Gertrude Stein, one of Gris' greatest allies.

The outbreak of the First World War, in the summer of 1914, surprised Gris in Collioure, where he was visiting Matisse. Kahnweiler's German origins forced him to remain outside France while his properties were confiscated, and he was only able to continue providing Gris with financial support for a few months longer. From that point on, the painter encountered serious adversities: added to his shaky financial situation were not only the war, but also the crisis of the avant-garde movements in a political context that fomented conservatism and nationalism. In the face of all this, as if he were concentrating all his vital effort on his art, during the war years he produced the works that are perhaps most admired today: it is generally asserted that the years from 1916 to 1919 were the culminating period of his painting. After that time, his fear of falling into excessive geometric rigidity brought about a change of manner: his painting became increasingly lyrical, his palette more nuanced. From 1920 onward, classicism, associated with the French pictorial tradition-although not only with that tradition-was progressively more evident in his work.

Despite the fact that Gris' failing health in his last years obliged him to travel to different places in France, he remained in contact with developments in Paris, primarily through his renewed relationship with Kahnweiler, and participated actively in them. Thus, despite his estranged existence, his opinion was required by such disparate reviews as Dada and Valori Plastici , and he participated in the controversy over the term purism, which in 1921 had been defined in the review L'Esprit Nouveau by Ozenfant and Jeanneret. Finally, between 1921 and 1923, Gris' collaboration with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes , as prestigious as they were boisterous, was a real upheaval for the austere Gris, which ended up intensifying a crisis that had already been foreshadowed in his work beforehand.

Perhaps out of a need to respond to this crisis, Gris' reflective character became more pronounced. Among the fruits of his meditations during this period were his best known writings in which he interpreted cubism. These include the article "Notes on my Painting" published in the German review Der Querschnitt of Frankfurt am Main, directed by A. Flechtheim (summer of 1923), in which he put forward his famous "deductive method," or the paper he delivered at the Sorbonne entitled "On the Possibilities of Painting" (May 15, 1924). Widely read afterward, the paper condenses Juan Gris' key ideas on his work, on cubism and the concept of painting itself.

At this time a belated recognition of his work began: art collectors Alphonse Kahn and G. F. Rever purchased several of his pieces, and the Flechtheim gallery in Düsseldorf devoted a major exhibition to him. His painting, as he himself said in his letters, began to take on a "Pompeian" air. In July of 1926, his son Georges, who lived in Madrid, decided to stay in Boulogne-sur-Seine, a town near Paris where Gris was living, quite close to Kahnweiler. Meanwhile, the painter's health worsened. A possible typhus was mentioned, a lung ailment, emphysema. In January, 1927, after spending a few days in the Maritime Alps, Josette, Georges and Juan Gris rushed back to Boulogne-sur-Seine. But Gris' health did not improve. Between February and May, Gris managed to return temporarily to his easel. On the 11th of May, in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Juan Gris died at the age of forty. M. D. J.- B.