Landscape 1917

Juan Gris made this painting, simply titled Landscape, with oil on canvas. I can see how, for Gris, painting was a way to ask questions about how we see the world. There’s a real tension here between flatness and depth, with shapes bumping up against each other in a way that's both jarring and harmonious. The colors, mostly greens and browns, are muted, yet they vibrate with an intensity that suggests something about the artist's process. Look at the way Gris uses hard edges in the foreground against the soft curves in the background, I love how the black interacts with the light green. I keep thinking about how the painting manages to be both a landscape and not a landscape at the same time. Gris’s contemporary, Fernand Leger comes to mind, who was similarly engaged in the project of translating real life to canvas, using geometric forms and simplified shapes. Ultimately, this painting is an invitation to slow down and really look, to let go of our assumptions and embrace the ambiguity that lies at the heart of art.