Houses in Paris, Place Ravignan 1911

Juan Gris made this drawing, Houses in Paris, Place Ravignan, with pencil and maybe a little white chalk. Can you imagine Gris walking around Paris, searching for the right combination of houses to draw, and then beginning to break them down, like he's taking them apart and reassembling them on paper? He must have been so focused, trying to find the underlying forms, the geometry of the buildings. There are all these angles, lines, and shading, as if he’s trying to capture not just what he sees, but how he understands the structure of the world. It’s like he’s not just drawing houses but thinking about how we perceive space, trying to get at the essence of what makes a house a house, or a place a place. We are still influenced by Cezanne, Picasso, and Braque, artists in conversation, pushing each other.