Juan Gris valuation
Spanish Cubist of clear, coloured still lifes, the most methodical painter of the movement.
Juan Gris was born José Victoriano González-Pérez in Madrid in 1887.
What a work by Juan Gris is worth
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Bio
Juan Gris was born José Victoriano González-Pérez in Madrid in 1887. He studied engineering at the Madrid School of Arts and Sciences and painting with José Moreno Carbonero, adopted the name Juan Gris in 1905, and in 1906 moved to Paris, where he lived at the Bateau-Lavoir near Picasso and drew for satirical magazines. He began painting seriously in 1911 and first exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants of 1912, with Homage to Pablo Picasso. His Cubism was systematic and colourful, built on still lifes of bottles, guitars, fruit and newspapers on tables and before open windows, and from 1915 increasingly geometric. His dealer was Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. He designed for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in the 1920s and died at Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1927, aged forty.
Gris died young and his output was limited, so oils are scarce and many are in museums; papiers collés, drawings, gouaches and the illustrated books appear more often. Douglas Cooper's catalogue raisonné is the reference, and a provenance through Kahnweiler's galleries is common for genuine works.
The Bateau-Lavoir, Kahnweiler and the open window
Still Life before an Open Window, Place Ravignan, of 1915, is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim hold major works of 1913 to 1917.
His son Georges was born in 1909, and from about 1913 his companion was Josette Herpin, who was with him until his death.
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