Violin and guitar

Date: 1913

In 1913, the year of Violin and Guitar, Juan Gris had completely assimilated the Cubist principles, through his knowledge of the work of Pablo Picasso and Braque and his own research on Cézanne. However, Gris was never an academic Cubist, like so many who went so far as to create a Cubist rulebook without understanding the challenges of the new visual language. Gris elaborates his own, unique vocabulary based on solid, scientific training, on the realist painting tradition and on the poetic and autonomous conception of the picture, creating his own idiosyncratic style.

Violin and Guitar is a perfect example of the Cubism that Gris is engaged in during this period. The canvas is divided into vertical sections and he places in each of them some elements that, painted with total realism, are perfectly recognisable. The volume that characterised the objects included in his initial works has disappeared almost completely now – a glimmer of it can be seen in the fragment of the glass in the area to the right of the violin and guitar –, and the fragmentation of space, attained by means of a net of horizontal and vertical lines, is now a fact. This spatial conception is one of the most significant characteristics of Gris' own particular analytic method. The segmented pictorial surface acquires impressive plastic coherence, in which the painter combines colour, planes and linear shapes in compositions that define his personal Cubist style, based on constructive rigor that is almost mathematical and in the use of a refined chromatism.

Gris painted picture Violin and guitar in 1913. Prevailing color of this fine art print is vivid and its shape is portrait. This image is printed on demand - you can choose material, size and finishing.

José Victoriano González Pérez (Juan Gris) (1887-1927) was a Spanish cubist painter and sculptor. Born in Madrid, he graduated from engineering and painting. In 1905, he adopted the name of Juan Gris. In 1906, he moved to Paris, where he followed the path of his friend and compatriot Pablo Picasso. For many years, he worked as a satirical painter. He began to take his work seriously in 1911 and a year later he exhibited Portrait of Picasso at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1915, he painted another portrait of his friend, Amadeo Modigliani. He designed ballet scenes and costumes for the famous Russian ballet, led by the legendary impresario Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev. At age 40, he died of kidney failure in Boulogne-sur-Seine, leaving behind his wife, Josette and son Georges.