Gris, Juan (1887-1927)
Le moulin à café (The Coffee Mill)
1916
Oil on canvas, 55 x 38 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
A member of Picasso‘s intimate circle, Gris began painting austere Cubist compositions around 1910. After 1915, his compositions became more complex and his colors richer. This painting features a coffee mill, a bottle, and a wine glass on a table covered with a green cloth. The simulated wood-grain pattern on the coffee mill’s base, perhaps inspired by Picasso‘s collage constructions, adds textural variety to this arrangement of fragmented and flattened geometric shapes. (CMA)