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Portrait of Pablo Picasso

Blue and brown Cubist painting of Picasso with painterdz palette.

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  • Blue and brown Cubist painting of Picasso with painterdz palette.

Date:

January–February 1912

Artist:

Juan Gris
Spanish, 1887–1927

About this artwork

In 1906 Juan Gris traveled to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and participated in the development of Cubism. Just six years later, Gris too was known as a Cubist and identified by at least one critic as “Picasso’s disciple.” Gris’s style draws upon Analytic Cubism—with its deconstruction and simultaneous viewpoint of objects—but is distinguished by a more systematic geometry and crystalline structure. Here he fractured his sitter’s head, neck, and torso into various planes and simple, geometric shapes but organized them within a regulated, compositional structure of diagonals. The artist further ordered the composition of this portrait by limiting his palette to cool blue, brown, and gray tones that, in juxtaposition, appear luminous and produce a gentle undulating rhythm across the surface of the painting.
Gris depicted Picasso as a painter, palette in hand. The inscription, “Hommage à Pablo Picasso,” at the bottom right of the painting demonstrates Gris’s respect for Picasso as a leader of the artistic circles of Paris and as an innovator of Cubism. At the same time, the inscription helped Gris solidify his own place within the Paris art world when he exhibited the portrait at the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1912.

Status

On View, Gallery 391

Department

Modern Art

Artist

Juan Gris

Title

Portrait of Pablo Picasso

Place

Spain (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1912

Medium

Oil on canvas

Inscriptions

Signed and inscribed, l.r.: "Hommage á Pablo Picasso/Juan Gris"

Dimensions

93.3 × 74.4 cm (36 3/4 × 29 5/16 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Leigh B. Block

Reference Number

1958.525

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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