The fruit bowl

Cubist
In Paris, the Spanish artist Juan Gris witnesses the cubist experiments of Picasso and Braque. Like them, he begins working in this style and starts making collages.

Real and false
He pastes pieces of newspaper or wrapping paper to the drawing or painting. The painted reality and reality itself are thus merged together within the painting. To make the observer aware of this, in one of his collages he even sticks a piece of newspaper with the text: ‘Le vraie et le faux’ (The real and the false).

Refined
In The fruit bowl he reduces the interior with laid tables to circles, cylinders and surfaces, and pastes pieces of paper cut to shape onto it, some of which are also drawn or painted upon. The entire scene is categorically flat. The white of the cloth with red stripes, on which the plate and knife are drawn, is formed by the untreated material of the canvas itself. Here, the real and the false, reality and depiction, overlap in a refined manner.