Coffee Grinder and Glass
Framed: 23 5/8 x 20 1/8 inches (60.01 x 51.12 cm)
- 129
The Cubist Epoch, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 9-June 8, 1971, no. 117.
Fifty Years of French Painting: The Emergence of Modern Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, February 1-March 30, 1980, no. 33.
Juan Gris (1887-1927), Salas Pablo Picasso del Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid, September 20-November 24, 1985, no. 36.
Juan Gris: Paintings and Drawings 1910-1927, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, June 22-September 19, 2005, no. 55.In this jewel-like still life, the letters "Le J" refer to Le Journal—the Paris newspaper that Juan Gris depicted in lavender on the blue top of a black table. The window blinds, coffee grinder, and wine or aperitif glass suggest that the setting may be a Paris café.
The still life was a favored subject for Gris, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other Cubists. However, their paintings are not at all still! Instead, forms are broken up and overlaid. Tabletops tilt upward, and perspective is reversed. Cubist artists, like their contemporaries in science and mathematics, explored new ideas about time, space, and motion.
Purchased from the artist by Galerie L’Effort Moderne, Paris, stock no. 5175, January 31, 1918;
Private collection, Paris, by November 16, 1927 [1];
With Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris;
Mrs. B. Raymond, Los Angeles;
With Dalzell Hatfield Galleries, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, as Le Journal;
Earle W. Grant (1890-1971), San Diego, CA, by November 1970-1971;
Bequeathed by Grant to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1971.
NOTES:
[1] According to Léonce Rosenberg, in a letter to Amédée Ozenfant, November 16, 1927, Musée national d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle, Paris, Fonds Léonce Rosenberg.
Douglas Cooper, The Cubist Epoch, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Phaidon Press in association with The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970), 222, 288, (repro.).
“Major Cubist Survey Show Slated: Local Collector Lends Important Gris Painting,” San Diego Evening Tribune (November 13, 1970), E-4.
Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint (Paris: Berggruen Éditeur, 1977), no. 137, pp. 208-209, (repro.).
Fifty Years of French Painting: The Emergence of Modern Art, exh. cat. (Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1980).
Juan Gris (1887-1927), exh. cat. (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura y Banco de Bilbao, 1985), 178-179, (repro.).
Juan Gris: Correspondances avec Léonce Rosenberg, Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne (Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 1999), 122.
Juan Gris: Paintings and Drawings 1910-1927, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2005), 74, (repro.).
Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris: Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, 2nd ed. (1977; San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 2014), no. 137, pp. 242-243, (repro.).
