Guitar and Fruit Bowl on a Table 1917

This still life by Juan Gris—it feels like he’s broken the world into facets, reassembling it with a touch of melancholy and a muted palette of grays, browns, and creams. I imagine Gris, in his studio, shuffling these geometric forms like a deck of cards, trying out different arrangements. Did he start with the guitar, or did the fruit bowl come first? Each shape is carefully considered, yet there’s a sense of playfulness in the way they overlap and intersect. That dark shape, the pear in the fruit bowl, almost looks like a tear. Gris was part of a larger conversation; he and other artists were exploring new ways of seeing, pushing the boundaries of representation. Each of them riffing off one another, in an ongoing exchange of ideas, each mark contributes to the emotional and intellectual resonances of the work. Painting, like music, becomes a form of expression that embraces ambiguity.