Juan Gris (1915)

Modigliani, Amedeo (1884-1920)

Juan Gris
1915
Oil on canvas, 54.9 x 38.1 cm
Metropolitan Museum of ArtNew York

Modigliani, who left Italy for Paris in 1906, is said to have met the Spanish artist Juan Gris at the apartment of writer and art patron Gertrude Stein in 1909 or 1910. At the time of this portrait, Gris was twenty-seven and Modigliani thirty. Although he was influenced by Cubist painters such as Gris, Modigliani also briefly worked in sculpture under the tutelage of Constantin Brancusi. By 1914 Modigliani was focused solely on painting, but he presented his subjects with simple contours, elongated forms, and spare, stylized features that parallel those in his three-dimensional art. He produced a prodigious body of work before dying of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-five. (MET)

See also:

• Gris, Juan (1887-1927)