After working in Madrid as a satirical magazine illustrator, Juan Gris moved in 1906 to Paris, where he resided in the Montmartre tenement dubbed the Bateau-Lavoir ("laundry boat"), then also home to Pablo Picasso and a host of other artists. Although Gris ultimately devoted his full attention to painting, his roots as a satirist were never completely abandoned, as can be seen in this depiction of a smug middle-class gentleman. The artist painted Man in a Café while involved with the Puteaux Group, a circle of artists who gathered at Jacques Villon's suburban studio to discuss science and philosophy in relation to their Cubist practices. To construct his compositions, Gris would come to rely particularly on the section d'or, or golden section, the ratio or proportion employed by artists and architects since antiquity. Man in a Café, with its complex yet balanced system of grids and facets, may have been inspired by the golden section; it was exhibited in the landmark Salon de la Section d'Or in 1912. The inclusion of the initials PIC and AP in the painting may also indicate that Gris was paying homage to Cubism's cocreator, Picasso, and its early critic, Guillaume Apollinaire. Melissa Kerr, from Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art (2007), p. 154.