José Victoriano González-Pérez, better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France most of his life.
Closely connected to the innovative artistic genre Cubism, his works are among the movement's most distinctive.
Juan Gris studied engineering at the Madrid School of Arts and Manufactures, but he soon began making drawings for newspapers in the sensuously curvilinear Art Nouveau style.
Girs moved to Paris in 1906 and settled at the Bateau-Lavoir where his compatriot Pablo Picasso lived and was in touch with the evolution of Cubism.
Cubism was born by the art brushes of Picasso and Georges Braque around that time and soon Gris executed his first serious paintings and adopted the Cubist style in 1911.
The following year, the prominent art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler agreed to purchase his entire artistic output.
Unlike Picasso and Braque, whose Cubist works were monochromatic, Gris painted with bright harmonious colours in daring, novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse.In 1924, he first designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Ballets Russes.
Gris died in Boulogne-sur-Seine in Paris in the spring of 1927 at the age of forty, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges.
In the beginning of the 21-st century, a Gris painting was sold for more than USD69 million.
