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Glass and Checkerboard

Juan Gris Spanish
1914
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
The flattened planes and diverse materials of Cubist pictures are anything but illusionistic. Yet look again. For his fragmented checkerboard, Gris fashioned a delicate marquetry with inlaid pieces of faux bois wallpaper. As two-dimensional as the depicted scene may be, delicate shading conjures the thickness of the checkerboard along its top edge and the thinness of the stippled white paper plane below, which lifts ever so slightly off the tabletop. A Cubist glass, with its cup, stem, and base schematically rendered, sits at the edge of the table—or do we see two? The excessively large shadow to its right takes on a life of its own, to sinister or comic effect.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Glass and Checkerboard
  • Artist: Juan Gris (Spanish, Madrid 1887–1927 Boulogne-sur-Seine)
  • Date: 1914
  • Medium: Cut-and-pasted printed wallpapers, watercolor, gouache, conté crayon, and wove papers, selectively varnished, on canvas
  • Dimensions: 28 3/4 × 23 5/8 in. (73 × 60 cm)
  • Classification: Collages
  • Credit Line: Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Purchase, 1980
  • Rights and Reproduction: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. Photo: Philippe Migeat.
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art