Juan Gris

Estate of the artist (until 1965)
Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired in 1965)
Saidenberg Gallery, New York (1965-66)
Heinz Berggruen, Paris (1966-82)
Private Collection (acquired in 1982)

Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, Juan Gris, 1965, no. 18, illustrated in the catalogue and illustrated in colour on the cover
Los Angeles, County Museum of Art & New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cubist Epoch, 1970-71, no. 135, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Orangerie des Tuileries, Juan Gris, 1974, no. 128, illustrated in the catalogue
London, The Tate Gallery, The Essential Cubism, 1907-1920, 1983, no. 87, illustrated in the catalogue
Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, De Picasso à Barceló. Les artistes espagnols, 2003, no. 3, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Zeichnungen und Collagen des Kubismus: Picasso, Braque, Gris (exhibition catalogue), Kunsthalle, Bielefeld, 1979, no. 225, illustrated

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, taped to the overmount along the reverse of the top and bottom edges. There are artist's pinholes at the top and bottom edges. There is a diagonal flattened crease near the centre of the sheet, and a vertical flattened crease near the left edge, with some associated small losses. Apart from several supported tears running in from the extreme left and right edges, and some discolouration to the paper, this work is in good condition. Colours: In comparison to the printed catalogue illustration, the paper tone is softer and less yellow and the colours are stronger in the original.
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Gris created his Siphon et verre in the midst of World War I, just when Cubism was at the high point of its 'synthetic' pictorial reconstruction. No longer satisfied with collage, Gris translated all of his constructive ideas through his draughtsmanship, relying upon convincing pictorial recreations of patterns and texture to convey the assembled appearance of papier collés. Over the course of the 1910s, several artists would attempt to adopt the perspectival and compositional devices that the Cubist founders Braque and Picasso had started using at the end of the first decade, but few would be as highly regarded for their talent and vision as Gris. As a result, Gris was considered one of the leaders of the Cubist movement, along with Picasso, Braque and Léger. Recalling this period and her association with the Cubists, Gertrude Stein identified Gris as an artist of foremost importance among these figures: 'The only real Cubism is that of Picasso and Juan Gris. Picasso created it and Juan Gris permeated it with his clarity and exaltation' (G. Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, New York, 1933, p. 111).

Probably executed in April-May 1916, Siphon et verre is closely related to the oil version Le Siphon (fig. 1), painted in May of that year. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Gris' dealer and the founder of the Galerie Louise Leiris, provided the following analysis of Gris' particular Cubist style: '[T]he emblems which Juan Gris invented 'signified' the whole of the object which he meant to represent. All the details are not present. The emblems are not comprehensible without previous visual experiences... The picture contains not the forms which have been collected in the visual memory of the painter, but new forms, forms which differ from those of the 'real' objects we meet within the visible world, forms which are truly emblems and which only become objects in the perception of the spectator' (D.-H. Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His Life and Work, London, 1947, p. 90). 

Fig. 1, Juan Gris, Le Siphon (siphon, verre et journal), 1916, oil on canvas, Museum Ludwig, Cologne