Juan Gris
Juan Gris, a Spanish-born painter, made important contributions to the modern style of painting called Cubism. GrisÕs paintings were always depicting his immediate surroundings. He painted still lives composed of simple, everyday objects, portraits of friends, and occasionally landscapes or cityscapes. The objects in his paintings and collages are more clearly defined and richly colored than those in the works of the earlier cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
His attention to the object in his compositions, and more typically Spanish hues, link his work to the Spanish still-life tradition. That tradition presents itself in many of his works. In Gris, work Bottle of Anis del Mono he puts the whole label of the bottle. Most typical of which is PicassoÕs Spanish Still Life. In this work, Picasso utilizes the precise red and yellow colors of the Spanish flag in depicting a ticket to a bullfight. Synthetic cubism was what Gris was painting. Pablo Picasso also being of Spanish decent used these influences.
Cubism began as an intellectual revolt against the artistic expression of previous eras. Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism are the two main terms used to describe paintings from this movement. In Analytical Cubism, the artist broke down, or analyzed, and then reassembled the observed forms in a mixture of ways. Similarly, in Synthetic Cubism, artists attempted to synthesize or combine imaginative elements into new representational structures. Among the specific elements abandoned by the cubists were the sensual appeal of paint texture and color, subject matter with emotional charge or mood, the play of light on form, movement, atmosphere, and the illusionism that proceeded from scientifically based perspective. Instead, Cubists used an analytic system in order to disjoint and reorganize the three-dimensional subject, which they were painting. In a shallow plane or within many interlocking and usually transparent planes the object would be
His attention to the object in his compositions, and more typically Spanish hues, link his work to the Spanish still-life tradition. That tradition presents itself in many of his works. In Gris, work Bottle of Anis del Mono he puts the whole label of the bottle. Most typical of which is PicassoÕs Spanish Still Life. In this work, Picasso utilizes the precise red and yellow colors of the Spanish flag in depicting a ticket to a bullfight. Synthetic cubism was what Gris was painting. Pablo Picasso also being of Spanish decent used these influences.
Cubism began as an intellectual revolt against the artistic expression of previous eras. Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism are the two main terms used to describe paintings from this movement. In Analytical Cubism, the artist broke down, or analyzed, and then reassembled the observed forms in a mixture of ways. Similarly, in Synthetic Cubism, artists attempted to synthesize or combine imaginative elements into new representational structures. Among the specific elements abandoned by the cubists were the sensual appeal of paint texture and color, subject matter with emotional charge or mood, the play of light on form, movement, atmosphere, and the illusionism that proceeded from scientifically based perspective. Instead, Cubists used an analytic system in order to disjoint and reorganize the three-dimensional subject, which they were painting. In a shallow plane or within many interlocking and usually transparent planes the object would be
Bibliography: Antliff, Mark and Patricia Leighten, Cubism and Culture, Thames and Hudson, 2000. Green, Christopher, Juan Gris, Yale, 1992.