JUAN GRIS Spanish 1887-1927 Oil on Canvas

Oil on canvas. Featuring cubist still life of vase and flowers. Signed and attr. Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887-1927) on the lower right corner. Gallery label on verso and dated 1822. 46 x 38 cm (18.1 x 15.0 in). Originally trained in math and physics, Juan Gris moved to Paris in 1906, where he met Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and became involved in the Cubist movement. Gris took a highly mathematical approach to Cubist painting, rendering discrete forms with precision and exactitude, the resulting images almost resembling technical drawings. The composition of Jar, Flask, and Glass (1911), for example, was derived from an underlying grid structure, the different modules depicting different planar perspectives and yielding an overall composition that is both fractured and flattened. Gris also experimented with Pointillism in works such as Newspaper and Fruit Dish (1916), and often alluded to earlier artists such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Paul Cezanne through both style and subject matter.