Juan Gris (1887-1927)

'I work with the elements of the intellect, with the imagination. I try to make concrete that which is abstract. I proceed from the general to the particular, by which I mean that I start with an abstraction in order to arrive at a new fact. Mine is an art of synthesis, of deduction, as Raynal has said. [...] I consider that the architectural element in painting is mathematics, the abstract side; I want to humanise it. [...] Cézanne tends towards architecture, I tend away from it. That is why I compose with abstractions (colours) and make my adjustments when these colours have assumed the form of objects. For example, 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: what I mean is that I adjust the white so that it becomes a paper and the black so that it becomes a shadow.' (Gris, quoted in D.-H. Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: His Life and Work, London, 1969, p. 193).