Nature Morte. Still Life. 1922. by Juan Gris, 1887-1927

Juan Gris, 1887-1927
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Nature Morte. Still Life. 1922.

Stencil print in colours. 1922. Signed in full in pencil. The exact edition size not known. Possibly printed at the studio of Pouyard, Paris 1922. Commissioned for special subscribers to the review L'Esprit Nouveau in 1922. A large part of the edition was lost or damaged. Impressions are now very rare.
Ref: Kahnweiler - Juan Gris Prints no 34.
Provenance: Collection Edwin Engleberts, Geneva.

Excellent impression with very strong colours. On pale cream light wove paper. Excellent condition; very slightest signs of old mounting on the reverse, the extreme bottom edge of the sheet with faint traces of creasing. Full (?) margins. Sheet: 9 5/8 x 13ins. Image: 6 1/2 x 9 7/8ins (164x250mm).

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This ?Still Life? composition is the most important cubist image which Gris made in his print oeuvre.

The work was commissioned from Gris in 1922 by the publishers of the avant-garde review L?Esprit Nouveau. Drawn in gouache it was then translated into stencil-print. The impressions were presented to the special subscribers to L?Esprit Nouveau. Although originally in what was probably an edition of several hundred because of its ephemeral nature, and its issue with the review, the majority of impressions were either lost, thrown-away or very severely damaged. Fine impressions have become extremely rare nowadays.

Juan Gris was born in Spain but in 1906 he moved like so many of his contemporaries to Paris. He lived at the infamous Bateau-Lavoir studio and became a close friend of Picasso. In 1910 he abandoned the satirical themes on which he had concentrated up until that time and adopted Picasso?s ideas about Cubism, becoming one of the most creative and influential painters in that style. His approach to composition, working from elements of objects and building the composition up into a rhythmical whole, was really the essence of what has become known as ?Synthetic Cubism?, and, with Gleizes and Marcoussis, he became the most important painter of that second phase of the movement.