ABSTRACT
Juan Gris's solemnity was tempered by his experience as a graphic artist. In Paris, Gris found studio quarters in the broken-down Bateau Lavoir, where P. Picasso also lived. He met his countryman there, and soon came to know the entire circle of painters and writers, which included G. Braque, G. Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, and other luminaries of the Parisian avant-garde. Gris still earned a small living as a graphic artist, now contributing drawings to the Parisian papers, but his artistic ambitions were beginning to take serious shape from his contacts with Picasso and Braque particularly. Gris was, of course, no ordinary fellow-traveler of the avant-garde. He came to Cubism after its syntax had been created by Picasso and Braque, but he brought to it a serious intelligence and a gift for graphic expression which he was then arduously bending in the direction of a more painterly vision.
