Irregular, geometric shapes in burnt orange, pale peach, light blue, forest and mint green, brown, taupe, gray, and black are layered and spread across this horizontal, abstract painting. They are mostly flat planes of color. One shape to our right of center has four rows of rounded rectangles to create a checkboard pattern of sage green against terracotta brown. A wide parchment-brown band divides the checkboard from top to bottom. The artist signed the lower right, “Juan Gris.”

Glass and Checkerboard

Juan Gris

Irregular, geometric shapes in burnt orange, pale peach, light blue, forest and mint green, brown, taupe, gray, and black are layered and spread across this horizontal, abstract painting. They are mostly flat planes of color. One shape to our right of center has four rows of rounded rectangles to create a checkboard pattern of sage green against terracotta brown. A wide parchment-brown band divides the checkboard from top to bottom. The artist signed the lower right, “Juan Gris.”

Colors in this work

Details
Artist
Juan Gris
Date
c. 1917
Medium
oil on wood
Dimensions
overall: 29.85 × 41.28 cm (11 3/4 × 16 1/4 in.) framed: 54.61 × 65.41 × 8.26 cm (21 1/2 × 25 3/4 × 3 1/4 in.)
Department
CMC
Holding institution
National Gallery of Art
Palette

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Image provider
national-gallery-of-art
License
CC0-1.0
Credit
Woodner Collection. Gift of Dian Woodner

Art Genome Taxonomy

10 tags

Subject Matter

  • Still Life Both · 88%

    The title names a glass and checkerboard, and the image presents an arranged grouping of object-like forms within a still-life composition, though their identities are substantially fragmented.

Styles and Movements

  • Cubism Visual · 98%

    The composition breaks recognizable forms into overlapping angular planes and geometric fragments, strongly supporting a Cubist reading.

Visual Qualities

  • Fragmented Geometry Visual · 97%

    Adjoining polygonal planes overlap and interpenetrate across the surface, creating a fractured geometric structure rather than conventionally modeled forms.

  • Angular Visual · 97%

    Angular contours, wedges, pointed corners, and irregular straight-edged shapes dominate the composition.

  • Flatness Visual · 95%

    The forms are predominantly broad, flat areas of color with limited tonal modeling and little conventional spatial recession.

  • Patterns Visual · 99%

    The lower-right portion contains repeated rounded green marks arranged in rows against a terracotta-brown ground, producing a checkerboard-like pattern.

  • Earth Tones Visual · 95%

    Burnt orange, terracotta, ocher, taupe, dark green, gray, and black dominate the palette, with lighter peach and pale green accents.

Medium and Techniques

  • Oil Painting Metadata · 99%

    The National Gallery of Art catalog identifies the classification as painting and the medium as oil on wood.

Time Periods

  • 1900 - 1917 Art Metadata · 98%

    The catalog dates the work to c. 1917, placing it within the 1900–1917 period category.

Materials

  • Wood Metadata · 99%

    The catalog specifies wood as the support in the medium description, “oil on wood.”

Source & rights

Juan Gris. Glass and Checkerboard. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

High-resolution sources

Catalog record ↗ Image source ↗ Image license ↗ Image-use terms ↗ Catalog metadata terms ↗

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