Lot #1186: JUAN GRIS - Nature morte Cubiste - Charcoal drawing on paper

 

Artist: Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887 - 1927).
Title: "Nature morte Cubiste".
Medium: Charcoal drawing on paper.
Date: Composed c1913-15.
Dimensions: Overall size: 17 13/16 x 22 7/16 in. (452 x 570 mm).
Lot Note(s): Signed in charcoal, lower right recto; collector's ink stamp (red letter 'B') lower right recto; annotations verso: collector attribution and title in pencil; collector and gallery ink stamps. Drawn on light cream watermarked laid paper. Condition: very good overall with no serious issues; areas of moderate staining left top edge and top left edge, both outside of the image; slight rippling to the paper; presents very well. Provenance: If you have a genuine interest in bidding on this work kindly send an email to: [email protected] for provenance information and additional image(s). Comment(s): The two best comparables to our example that we could find are “Le guitare,” charcoal on paper, 1913, 24 1/2” x 18 1/4,” sold for $365,000 including premium at Christie’s New York, Rockefeller Center, November 6, 2014, lot #218; and “Nature morte Cubiste,” charcoal on paper, c1915, 17 1/2” x 24 3/4,” the lot passing on pre-sale estimates of $150,000/250,000 at Sotheby’s New York, May 10, 2016, lot #166. Jose Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) Gonzalez-Perez, better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life. His works, which are closely connected to the emergence of an innovative artistic genre—Cubism—are among the movement's most distinctive. Although Gris regarded Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein wrote in ‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas’ that "Juan Gris was the only person [artist] whom Picasso wished away.” Gris was one of the most important, accomplished, and enduring adherents of Cubism, developing an original application of the aesthetic which he maintained for seventeen years. Paz García Ponce de León explains, “Juan Gris is the master of synthetic Cubism, standing well above masters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. He is now considered ‘the quintessential cubist,’ or, as the sculptor Lipchitz said, simply ‘the cubist’” (Paz García Ponce de León, Juan Gris: La Pasión por el Cubismo, Madrid, 2008, p. 193) (courtesy Sotheby’s New York). He died of kidney failure in Paris in 1927 at the age of 40. [30238-3-75000]