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拍品專文
Painted in 1926, Femme drapée belongs to the culminating phase of Juan Gris’s brief yet extraordinary career, a period in which his Cubism reached a new equilibrium of structure, lyricism, and classical poise. Created barely a year before the artist’s death, the painting epitomizes the serene monumentality and luminous clarity that distinguish his late works.
Depicting a standing woman enveloped in soft drapery, framed within the architectural order of a window or doorway, Gris constructs an image of timeless grace. The human figure—long a central motif in his art—here transcends its early analytic fragmentation to achieve a synthesis of form and feeling. The woman’s silhouette, rendered through interlocking planes of white, mauve and muted rose, is at once sculptural and ethereal. The drapery cascades in rhythmic folds that evoke both the harmonies of classical sculpture and the chromatic orchestration of a musical composition, a metaphor Gris himself often used to describe painting.
The use of the window as an internal frame is a pictorial idea that Gris first extensively employed in 1921, during a recuperative sojourn in the Provençal town of Bandol, as he painted from a hotel room whose windows looked out over the Mediterranean. The threefold repetition of borders creates a telescopic effect that leads the eye through the fore- and middle-grounds toward the open window; at the same time this structure opens outward to engage the viewer. Gris has played off the creamy and neutral tones in the figure against the stronger planes of color in the setting. Paloma Esteban Leal has stated, "As well as a more coherent composition and stronger and clearer fracturing, the paintings that he produced from March 1925 until the end of 1926 reveal a greater formal purity and, more importantly, a use of color that confirms Gris's indisputable status as a master colorist" (in Juan Gris: Drawings and Paintings 1910-1917, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Art Reina Sofía, 2005, p. 60).
The painting’s relatively large format further enhances its quiet monumentality. It conveys a sense of stillness and inward dignity reminiscent of Piero della Francesca, an artist whom Gris admired for his mathematical serenity. The work also reflects Gris’s lifelong search for the ideal reconciliation of modern form with classical harmony—an ambition that set him apart from his Cubist contemporaries and positioned him as an intellectual, even metaphysical, painter within the avant-garde.
Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber, who purchased this painting from Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, was described during a visit to America in 1930 as "without any question the most important collector of modern art in Europe today" ("Dr. Reber sees America" in Parnassus, 2 November 1930, p. 23). He was born in Germany, and in 1919 moved to Switzerland, where he eventually settled in Lausanne. He directed a wool-textile import firm, and with additional resources from his wife Erna's family fortune he began to collect Cezanne and other late nineteenth century masters in 1906. During the 1920s, influenced by Kahnweiler and the art historian Carl Einstein, he began to concentrate on acquiring cubist pictures, and went on to amass more than eighty works by Gris and seventy by Picasso; indeed the latter was upset to learn that Gris's representation in Reber's collection outnumbered his own. Reber also collected ancient and medieval art. Einstein praised Reber's all-embracing approach to collecting, "Reber has recognized that the beginning of all art history is founded in the present, that is to say, that historical accents are decided by modern art" ("La Collection Reber" in L'Intransigeant, 1 April 1930, p. 5).
In its calm synthesis of structure, color, and light, Femme drapée stands as a testament to Gris’s enduring quest for order and beauty—a final, luminous meditation on the human figure at the threshold between reality and abstraction.
Depicting a standing woman enveloped in soft drapery, framed within the architectural order of a window or doorway, Gris constructs an image of timeless grace. The human figure—long a central motif in his art—here transcends its early analytic fragmentation to achieve a synthesis of form and feeling. The woman’s silhouette, rendered through interlocking planes of white, mauve and muted rose, is at once sculptural and ethereal. The drapery cascades in rhythmic folds that evoke both the harmonies of classical sculpture and the chromatic orchestration of a musical composition, a metaphor Gris himself often used to describe painting.
The use of the window as an internal frame is a pictorial idea that Gris first extensively employed in 1921, during a recuperative sojourn in the Provençal town of Bandol, as he painted from a hotel room whose windows looked out over the Mediterranean. The threefold repetition of borders creates a telescopic effect that leads the eye through the fore- and middle-grounds toward the open window; at the same time this structure opens outward to engage the viewer. Gris has played off the creamy and neutral tones in the figure against the stronger planes of color in the setting. Paloma Esteban Leal has stated, "As well as a more coherent composition and stronger and clearer fracturing, the paintings that he produced from March 1925 until the end of 1926 reveal a greater formal purity and, more importantly, a use of color that confirms Gris's indisputable status as a master colorist" (in Juan Gris: Drawings and Paintings 1910-1917, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Art Reina Sofía, 2005, p. 60).
The painting’s relatively large format further enhances its quiet monumentality. It conveys a sense of stillness and inward dignity reminiscent of Piero della Francesca, an artist whom Gris admired for his mathematical serenity. The work also reflects Gris’s lifelong search for the ideal reconciliation of modern form with classical harmony—an ambition that set him apart from his Cubist contemporaries and positioned him as an intellectual, even metaphysical, painter within the avant-garde.
Dr. Gottlieb Friedrich Reber, who purchased this painting from Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, was described during a visit to America in 1930 as "without any question the most important collector of modern art in Europe today" ("Dr. Reber sees America" in Parnassus, 2 November 1930, p. 23). He was born in Germany, and in 1919 moved to Switzerland, where he eventually settled in Lausanne. He directed a wool-textile import firm, and with additional resources from his wife Erna's family fortune he began to collect Cezanne and other late nineteenth century masters in 1906. During the 1920s, influenced by Kahnweiler and the art historian Carl Einstein, he began to concentrate on acquiring cubist pictures, and went on to amass more than eighty works by Gris and seventy by Picasso; indeed the latter was upset to learn that Gris's representation in Reber's collection outnumbered his own. Reber also collected ancient and medieval art. Einstein praised Reber's all-embracing approach to collecting, "Reber has recognized that the beginning of all art history is founded in the present, that is to say, that historical accents are decided by modern art" ("La Collection Reber" in L'Intransigeant, 1 April 1930, p. 5).
In its calm synthesis of structure, color, and light, Femme drapée stands as a testament to Gris’s enduring quest for order and beauty—a final, luminous meditation on the human figure at the threshold between reality and abstraction.