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Lot Essay
In the years preceding World War I, Juan Gris (along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque) contributed to what may be considered the twentieth century's most influential art movement--Cubism. By 1916 Gris had absorbed Cubism's stylistic innovations and created an artistic philosophy and system very much his own. According to one of Cubism's primary proponents, the dealer and art historian D.-H. Kahnweiler, 1916 to 1919 "was one of the most fruitful and beautiful in the whole of Juan Gris' work. Gris had come to maturity and was in full possession of the resources of an art which he had also mastered intellectually" (D.-H. Kahnweiler, op. cit, p. 91).
Painted in 1919, La casserole illustrates what Gris himself described as his "deductive method". According to the artist, "I work with the elements of the intellect, with the imagination. I try to make concrete that which is abstract . . . Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder, but I begin with a cylinder and create an individual of a certain type. I make a bottle--a particular bottle--out of a cylinder" (quoted in ibid., p. 138). In La casserole, for example, a still-life composed of such items as a wine bottle, pitcher, saucepan, wine glass and newspaper emerges from a system of flat, colored planes and various shapes. The complexity of shapes and forms is enhanced by the artist's incorporation of light and shadow as compositional elements.
Influenced perhaps by the dramatic use of light in Baroque still-life paintings of his Spanish predecessors, Gris' paintings of this period often include contrasts of black and white, as well as a visual play of reflected imagery. Notice, for example, how the hole in the saucepan's handle (upper right) funnels light to appear as a grey dot in the upper left that functions simultaneously as the open mouth of the wine bottle and signals a visual rhythm of circular forms across the surface of the canvas. The dynamic equilibrium between representation and abstraction illustrates how Gris' work transcends naturalism in favor of the poetic. As described by his supporter Gertrude Stein, for Gris "still life was not a seduction it was a religion" (quoted in M. Rosenthal, Juan Gris, exh. cat., University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1992, p. 9).
La casserole once belonged to the Swiss collector Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber, described as "one of the foremost collectors of modern art in either hemisphere" (quoted in D. Kosinski, op. cit., p. 519). Beginning in the 1920s, Reber amassed about eighty works by Gris through dealers Léonce Rosenberg and D.-H. Kahnweiler. Gris' representation in the Reber collection was second only to that of Picasso, who apparently expressed concern that his own representation was nearly surpassed by that of his compatriot.
Douglas Cooper's catalogue raisonné of Gris' work states that Dr. Reber donated the present painting to the Ruhmeshalle, Barmen in 1928. The Ruhmeshalle was destroyed by fire in 1943 and Cooper, making the incorrect assumption that the painting was still in the building at that time, states the present work was destroyed by fire. Since the painting was not destroyed, it is likely that Reber lent rather than donated La casserole to the Ruhmeshalle, and sold it to his friend and fellow collector, the father of the present owner, in 1930 when he fell into financial difficulty. The present work has recently been reinstated into the Juan Gris archives.
Painted in 1919, La casserole illustrates what Gris himself described as his "deductive method". According to the artist, "I work with the elements of the intellect, with the imagination. I try to make concrete that which is abstract . . . Cézanne turns a bottle into a cylinder, but I begin with a cylinder and create an individual of a certain type. I make a bottle--a particular bottle--out of a cylinder" (quoted in ibid., p. 138). In La casserole, for example, a still-life composed of such items as a wine bottle, pitcher, saucepan, wine glass and newspaper emerges from a system of flat, colored planes and various shapes. The complexity of shapes and forms is enhanced by the artist's incorporation of light and shadow as compositional elements.
Influenced perhaps by the dramatic use of light in Baroque still-life paintings of his Spanish predecessors, Gris' paintings of this period often include contrasts of black and white, as well as a visual play of reflected imagery. Notice, for example, how the hole in the saucepan's handle (upper right) funnels light to appear as a grey dot in the upper left that functions simultaneously as the open mouth of the wine bottle and signals a visual rhythm of circular forms across the surface of the canvas. The dynamic equilibrium between representation and abstraction illustrates how Gris' work transcends naturalism in favor of the poetic. As described by his supporter Gertrude Stein, for Gris "still life was not a seduction it was a religion" (quoted in M. Rosenthal, Juan Gris, exh. cat., University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1992, p. 9).
La casserole once belonged to the Swiss collector Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber, described as "one of the foremost collectors of modern art in either hemisphere" (quoted in D. Kosinski, op. cit., p. 519). Beginning in the 1920s, Reber amassed about eighty works by Gris through dealers Léonce Rosenberg and D.-H. Kahnweiler. Gris' representation in the Reber collection was second only to that of Picasso, who apparently expressed concern that his own representation was nearly surpassed by that of his compatriot.
Douglas Cooper's catalogue raisonné of Gris' work states that Dr. Reber donated the present painting to the Ruhmeshalle, Barmen in 1928. The Ruhmeshalle was destroyed by fire in 1943 and Cooper, making the incorrect assumption that the painting was still in the building at that time, states the present work was destroyed by fire. Since the painting was not destroyed, it is likely that Reber lent rather than donated La casserole to the Ruhmeshalle, and sold it to his friend and fellow collector, the father of the present owner, in 1930 when he fell into financial difficulty. The present work has recently been reinstated into the Juan Gris archives.