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Harlequin

1917
Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927)
This standing figure is the only sculpture that Juan Gris ever made. The polychrome sculpture is balanced on a protruding wedge-shaped slab that reinforces the strong vertical axis and volume of the torso. The body was carefully constructed of curved and sharply angled forms whose proportions were built up according to the rules of the Golden Section; it was then painted in muted colors once the plaster had dried. In the autumn of 1917, Gris encountered technical problems with the work and completed it with the help of the Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, whom he had met and befriended the previous year.

Object Details

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