Juan Gris, originally José Victoriano González-Pérez (March 23, 1887 – May 11, 1927), was a Spanish sculptor and painter, who operated from France for most of his life. Gris was a Mechanical Drawing student (1902-1904) at the School of Arts and Manufactures in Madrid. During this period, he drew humorous illustrations for local newspapers. During 1904-1905 he learned painting from José María Carbonero, an ‘academic’ artist. While he continued to paint for local newspapers, it was only in 1910 that he began to take his painting seriously, developing his own unique style of ‘synthetic cubism’ in 1912. Two of his works in this period include ‘Guitar and Flowers’ (1912) and the ‘Portrait of Picasso’ (1912), while ‘The blind man from the sun’ marked 1914.
Although Gris was associated with Pablo Picasso and the other artists who followed ‘Cubism’, his creations were nonetheless distinct from other Cubist artists. Strict geometric patterns characterized most of Juan’s works. He also used paper collage in his works, as is evident in his “El Ciego del Sol”. Exact and explicit are the words that can come close to describing Gris’s artwork. Unlike the ‘Cubist’ works of Picasso and Braque, which were monochrome, the use of vivid colours, done in a harmonious tone, characterized Gris’s style. One of his most famous works is “The Sunblind” (1914), a ‘synthetic cubist’ work of gouache, collage, chalk and charcoal on canvas, measuring 92.1 cm x 72.7 cm. Juan Gris used crayons liberally to create this work of art.
The beginning of ‘synthetic cubism’ is marked by the use of collage or ‘papier colle’, together with other materials, on a multicolored surface. In this creative art style, the surface of the canvas is treated as opaque, which is accentuated with other applied materials so that the images stand out from the surface. “The Sunblind” is a beautiful piece of art depicting light slipping through a Venetian blind. The creation also shows the shadow of a wine glass being cast on the nearby table. This beautiful collage shows painted shutters alongside a real newspaper. The paper called Le Socialiste des Pyrénées-Orientales was a local paper from Collioure, a place where Gris stayed in 1914. The paper’s description possibly reflects his political preferences.
Juan Gris created only one sculpture in his lifetime, which was a painted plaster called ‘Harlequin’, in 1917. During 1917 to 1920, Gris played with objects and shadows in his work and used complex textures and bright colors in his paintings, which included ‘The fruit bowl on checkered cloth’ (1917). Therefore, his works became more and more complicated. His paintings showed that Juan was more interested in maintaining ‘realism’ in his ‘Cubist’ works of art than either Picasso or Braque. The Spanish painter died in 1927, in Boulogne-sur-Seine (Paris), when he was barely forty years old, but not before carving out a niche for himself in the ‘Cubist’ genre and creating a masterpiece such as ‘The Blind Man from the Sun’. “The Sunblind” is currently on display at the Tate Gallery in London.