GRIS, Juan

Juan Gris (José Victoriano González Pérez),
Spanish 1887-1927)
Juan Gris, real name José Victoriano González Pérez, was born in Madrid in 1887. His father, Gregorio González, was a well known paper manufacturer. He studied engineering at Madrid's School of Arts and Sciences. He took painting lessons with the minor academic artist José Maria Carbonero .

After his fathers death, Gris moved to Paris in 1906 and remained in France for the rest of his life. He had missed military service, so he was unable to return to Spain. He settled in the Bateau Lavoir, a tenement that housed many painters, critics, and poets, and it was there that he met Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Maurice Raynal.
Gris produced his first cubist paintings in 1911-1912..Gris and his wife spent the summer of 1913 with Picasso at Ceret, and the following year he spent the time spent time with Henri Matisse at Collioure. Gris returned to Paris in 1915 and suffered poverty during World War I.

Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, became Gris's dealer in 1920 and wrote the first monograph on the painter in 1929. Kahnweiler was one of the influential connoisseurs of the 20th century. As a businessman Kahnweiler innovated many new ways of working with artists; and art dealing; - now established practise with art dealers. In 1907 when there were only half a dozen good galleries in Paris, he made contracts with artists to buy all of their work .He held exhibitions of their work and he promoted their work internationally. He encouraged the practise of Beau Livres (beautiful book), where a contemporary artist illustrates a work of a contemporary writer - he expanded his presentations by bringing together artists, writers and poets to produce their works as a joint project in more than 40 books. In fact as an art and literary publisher he had no equal; being the first to publish works by Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, André Masson, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and many others and in so doing launched many literary careers.

Due to Khanweiler in helping his career and due to poor health , in 1922, Gris moved his studio from the "Bateau Lavoir" to Boulogne-sur-Seine. In 1924 and 1925 Gris spent much of his time writing and lecturing on his views on painting. In 1924 he delivered a paper at the Sorbonne, Les Possibilités de la peinture (On the Possibilities of Painting), which was later translated and widely published. He died in Paris i1927 at the age of forty from an asthma attack

'Ne Coupez pas Mademoiselle ou les erreurs des PTT. Conte philosophique' by Max Jacob