Juan Gris

Original Prints: Lithographs

Soon after coming to Paris in 1906 from Madrid, Juan Gris (1887 - 1927) became a founding figure of cubism with his life-long friends, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.  According to Salvador Dali, Juan Gris was the greatest of the cubist painters, more important than Picasso, because he was "truer".

In the 1920s, this truth developed into a very personal and sophisticated graphic style, which unfortunately never matured due to his untimely death at the age of 40; his lithographs are thus quite rare.  

The pure line tracing elegant contours and the systematically repeated rhythms in these lithographs mark Gris's relinquishment of cubism and his return to a refined form of French classicism. 

He cogently explained: "Though in my system I may depart greatly from any form of idealistic or naturalistic art, in practice I cannot break away from the Louvre.  Mine is the method of all times, the method used by the Old Masters: there are technical means and they remain constant."

	Marcelle La Brune Kahnweiler 2 lithograph, 1921, the only known state, a very good impression, printed in bluish-green ink on grayish chine volant, with full margins, signed and numbered 22/50 in pencil
	Boris Kahnweiler 2 lithograph, 1921, the only known state, a very good impression, with full margins, numbered 16/50 in pencil, lower right