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Portrait of Pablo Picasso
Juan Gris · Early Modern (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism)
- Artist
- Juan Gris (1887–1927)
- Date
- 1912
- Dimensions
- 93.3 x 74.4 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, United States
This portrait shows Pablo Picasso, seated and holding a palette, broken up into a grid of angular facets in cool blues, greys and browns. His face, hair and jacket are split into planes seen from different angles at once.
A closer look
Juan Gris, a Spaniard like Picasso, lived in the same studio building in Montmartre, the Bateau-Lavoir, and watched the birth of Cubism at close quarters. This painting, his tribute to the movement's founder, was the work that announced Gris as a major Cubist when he showed it at the Salon des Indépendants in 1912. Compared with Picasso's own, more fragmented works, Gris's Cubism is clearer and more mathematical: the composition is built on a regular structure of diagonals, and the light falls in an orderly way across the facets.
More by Juan Gris
Famous works elsewhere
- The Bottle of Anís del Mono 1914
- The Blue Carpet 1925
- Carafe and Book 1920