Juan Gris, Butelka, “Bottle, Glass and Newspaper”

In Ismar Littmann’s collection, there were two still lifes by the Spanish Cubist Juan Gris. Gris, born in Madrid in 1887, permanently settled in Paris in 1906. The artist moved in the Parisian circle of prominent painters of the era: Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso. Around 1911, he developed his own Cubist style, gaining particular recognition for his still lifes. Their distinctive collage-like character, simplified shapes of objects, and vibrant colors found many admirers. Among them was the Breslau collector Ismar Littmann, who acquired the composition “Bottle, Glass, and Newspaper” in Alfred Flechtheim’s salon in Berlin.

A year after Juan Gris’s death in 1927, at the age of only forty, Alfred Flechtenheim’s gallery organized an exhibition dedicated to the memory of the Spanish painter. Littmann loaned one of the artist’s still lifes from his collection, and in 1933, the collector sent two Gris canvases to a London exhibition of contemporary painting.

Before ending up in Flechtheim’s hands, the painting “Bottle, Glass, and Newspaper” was in the Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris. The gallery was run by the antiquarian and journalist Léonce Rosenberg, the brother of the well-known art dealer Paul Rosenberg. Léonce Rosenberg was a fan of Gris’s work and even organized a monographic exhibition of his works in 1919.

From 1941 onwards, the composition was in New York, first at M. Knoedler & Co.’s gallery, and a year later, it became part of the Valentine Dudensing collection at the Marie Harriman Gallery, where it was held until 1972. Subsequently, the painting was sold to the Modarco collection in Panama, then to the Theo Gallery in Madrid, where it was acquired by an anonymous collector. In 2006, the painting was sold through an agreement between Ismar Littmann’s heirs and the previous owner at the Sotheby’s gallery in London.

Painting Information: 

oil on plywood, dimensions: 55 x 33 cm, storage location unknown.

Literature:

Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Paris 1977, s. 260.