La Guitare

The presence of the violin and guitar is a persistent feature in Gris' still-life compositions of 1913, and the present work, Le Guitare, is a fine example. Of the thirty-odd table-top arrangements that the artist painted in that year, music is the fundamental theme in twenty of them, and most of these involve the representation of either the violin, guitar, or occasionally, both instruments together. The violin and the guitar are perhaps the most poetically evocative still-life motifs in the cubist inventory of everyday objects. These instruments signify that the artist has figuratively left the isolation of the studio and has connected with the world of public performance and entertainment, whether it is the high art of the salon or the popular music making enjoyed in a metropolitan café or a village taverna. In Gris’ choice of depicting the guitar, he aligns himself even more so with his contemporary, Picasso. “Picasso on the other hand, made more frequent use of the guitar and mandolin, whose rounded outlines better suited his purpose. It seems plausible to assume that the cubists, in their arduous task of reappraising everyday appearances through a new and revolutionary plastic system, liked the violin, the guitar and the mandolin because the basic design of these instruments had undergone very little change for several centuries. Their challenge to the cubists was all the more explicit. At any rate, the violin's complexity of design appears in a sense to symbolize the conscientious intellectuality which Gris brought to cubist research" (Juan Gris, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1958, pp. 26-27).

Gris often executed a carefully composed and meticulously rendered drawing in preparation for a painting, in which the majority of the lines were made with a compass and ruler. He usually destroyed these drawings after the painting had been completed, and near the end of his life he instructed his wife to burn those that remained after his death. For these reasons very few mature cubist drawings by Gris exist today. The present drawing is not formally recognized as a study for a specific painting; however the composition and the sectional reiteration of the guitar’s construction most closely resemble two paintings from the same year, Guitare et verre (Cooper, no. 45) painted in June and especially Les trois cartes (Cooper, no. 54; fig. 1) painted in September. Furthermore, there exists another drawing from 1913 (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) wherein which Gris has projected the neck of the guitar in two contrasting sections, splayed out from the body of the instrument, and most closely resembling the present work.