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Lamp

1916
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)

The simplicity of this still life’s subject, a lamp on a single-drawer table set in front of a wainscoted wall, belies the picture’s complex organization. Several grids turning this way and that on the diagonal create an underlying structure. Facets of objects, table, and wall are placed within that armature. Rational geometry and a systematic treatment of light and shade are constants in Juan Gris’s paintings, but this composition, with its deep black, subdued earth tones, and more focused areas of bright white, violet, and bottle green, has a dark drama that belongs to his work during the period of World War I. Gris’s dotted colors tend to float free of depicted surfaces to find their own life as sheer sparkle and pure chromatic energy. Similarly, shadow is loosened from its traditional task of helping add dimension to solid forms and redeployed to give the composition its immaterial and uncanny aspect.


Object Details

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