Violin Hanging on a Wall 1913

Juan Gris made this drawing of a violin on paper, we don’t know when exactly. He’s taken the real world and made it into something new. The marks are like hesitations – lines laid down and then thought about. It’s not just a picture of a violin; it's a construction of shapes and shadows. Look at how the light and dark play together, creating depth and form. The surface is alive with the ghost of lines. Each element of the violin is simplified into planes and angles, like a puzzle just waiting to be assembled, but is never complete. See the music note, how it seems to float between the violin and the background. Gris was part of the Cubist movement, and you can see that interest in deconstructing objects here. Think about Picasso, and Braque, his contemporaries, who were also smashing the picture plane. Like them, Gris wasn't just painting what he saw, but what he knew, and what he imagined. It’s a conversation between seeing and thinking.