The Guitar 1916

Juan Gris made ‘The Guitar’ with oil paint, probably sometime in the 1910s. I imagine it came into being tentatively. Gris probably started with a few lines, and built it up bit by bit with thin layers of grayish blues, blacks, and muted browns. I sympathize with Gris here because he’s trying to find the guitar by deconstructing it and reassembling it, almost like it’s made of cardboard cutouts. You know, you can almost feel the grain of the canvas underneath, like the painting is breathing. Look at the way the shapes overlap and intersect, the way the light seems to filter through the different planes. It's almost like a dance! This reminds me of how other painters, like Braque and Picasso, were working with similar ideas at the time. It's like they were all in this amazing conversation, pushing each other to see the world in new ways, with abstract forms, broken shapes, and multiple points of view. We see the guitar as a jigsaw puzzle of planes, its curves abstracted. Like the other modernists, Gris’ visual language opens up a realm of possibility, where seeing becomes an active, creative endeavor.