Dr. Nicole R. Myers, The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art
Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Spain
Upon reviewing Juan Gris’s first solo exhibition in 1919, Raymond Radiguet observed, “Juan Gris paints like all painters, that is to say on canvas or cardboard or wood. Did I say he is no different from the others? There is always a certain professional secret, many people would like to know it.” With this simple yet insightful commentary, Radiguet put his finger on an essential aspect of Gris’s work that has received scant attention in the modest body of scholarship dedicated to this foundational member of Cubism—namely, the concept of Gris as a skilled draftsman and brilliant painter alongside his prescribed role as the group’s most rational and austere practitioner. In this keynote lecture, Dr. Nicole Myers unlocks Gris’s elusive studio practice, presenting the artist as a beguiling virtuoso who concealed his professional secrets even as he revealed them across the surfaces of his paintings.
This keynote lecture will be released as part of the virtual symposium Juan Gris’s Cubist Legacy. The symposium will feature additional talks by Paloma Alarcó, Chief Curator of Modern Painting, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain; Katy Rothkopf, The Anne and Ben Cone Memorial Director of the Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies, and Senior Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, The Baltimore Museum of Art; and Eugenio Carmona Mato, Professor of Art History, Málaga University, Spain. These talks will be released in early July.
Cubism in Color: The Still Lifes of Juan Gris is co-organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and The Baltimore Museum of Art and is presented by Texas Instruments. Additional support is provided by Acción Cultural Española and the Robert Lehman Foundation. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture.
Image: Juan Gris, The Painter’s Window, 1925, oil on canvas, Baltimore Museum of Art: Bequest of Saidie A. May. Photography by Mitro Hood