Color and Illusion: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris
The first U.S. exhibition in over 35 years dedicated to Spanish artist Juan Gris highlights his pioneering and revolutionary contributions to the Cubist movement by focusing on his fascination with subjects drawn from everyday life.
The Baltimore Museum of Art and Dallas Museum of Art co-organize the first U.S. exhibition in over 35 years dedicated to the Spanish artist Juan Gris, Color and Illusion: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris. The exhibition highlights the artist’s pioneering and revolutionary contributions to the Cubist movement by focusing on his fascination with subjects drawn from everyday life.
Through more than 40 paintings and collages that span all major periods of the artist’s evolving practice, Color and Illusion reveals the transformation of Gris’s innovative style and principal motifs from 1911 until 1927, the year of his tragically early death. His exquisite compositions explore the boundary between abstraction and representation, tension and stasis, color, and form.
About Juan Gris
Born José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González Pérez in Madrid, Juan Gris (1887-1927) was one of the primary contributors to the development of Cubism in the early 20th century. Though he was championed by art dealers Daniel Kahnweiler and Léonce Rosenberg and writer and art collector Gertrude Stein, who considered him “a perfect painter,” Gris’s pivotal role within the movement has often been overshadowed by his better-known cohorts Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Fernand Léger.
His works are among the movement’s most original and inventive, building upon early Cubist precedents with experimental and exquisite still-life compositions distinguished by their vibrant colors, bold patterns, and a constantly shifting approach. By bringing together nearly 40 of Gris’s most distinctive still lifes from major European and American collections, Cubism in Color reveals the virtuosic range of the artist’s short yet prolific career, illuminating his boundary-pushing contributions to Cubism.
Venue
Baltimore Museum of Art 10 Art Museum Dr, Baltimore, MD 21218
Admission
Free, RSVP required
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Credits
Co-organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and The Baltimore Museum of Art with the support of Acción Cultural Española and the Robert Lehman Foundation. Co-curated by Katy Rothkopf, The Anne and Ben Cone Memorial Director of The Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies and Senior Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the BMA and Nicole R. Myers, The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art at the DMA. Image: The Table, Juan Gris, 1914, Philadelphia Museum of Art
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