Juan Gris Quotes

• The instant you know what the result will be, you are lost.

  Juan Gris

  Serendipity, Lost, Results

  33 Copy quote

• Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought. It is possible to invent a technique or a manner independently, but one cannot invent the whole complexity of a state of mind.

  Juan Gris

  Mind, Technique, States

  "'Chez les cubistes' (in 'Bulletin de la Vie Artistique')". "Juan Gris: His Life and Work". Book by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1946.

  33 Copy quote

• I try to make concrete that which is abstract.

  Juan Gris

  Trying, Abstract, Concrete

  Response to questionnaire circulated to the Cubists by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, editors of "L'Esprit Nouveau" # 5, February 1921.

  27 Copy quote

• I always pet a dog with my left hand because if he bit me I'd still have my right hand to paint with.

  Juan Gris

  Dog, Hands, Pet

  "Washboat days". Book by Jeanine Warnod, p. 204, 1972.

  30 Copy quote

• I prefer the emotion that corrects the rule.

  Juan Gris

  Emotion

  23 Copy quote

• Painting for me is like a fabric, all of a piece and uniform, with one set of threads as the representational, esthetic element, and the cross-threads as the technical, architectural, or abstract element. These threads are interdependent and complementary, and if one set is lacking the fabric does not exist. A picture with no representational purpose is to my mind always an incomplete technical exercise, for the only purpose of any picture is to achieve representation.

  Juan Gris

  Exercise, Mind, Doe

  "On the Possibilities of Painting". Lecture, Sorbonne, May 15, 1924.

  26 Copy quote

• Cézanne made a cylinder out of a bottle. I start from the cylinder to create a special kind of individual object. I make a bottle a particular bottle out of a cylinder.

  Juan Gris

  Special, Bottles, Cylinders

  22 Copy quote

• I make a composition with a white and a black, and make adjustments when the white has become a paper and the black a shadow.

  Juan Gris

  White, Black, Shadow

  16 Copy quote

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