Juan Gris (born José Victoriano González Pérez) developed a distinctively personal mode of synthetic Cubism. Surfaces often have a glossy, metallic look and edges are given knifelike definition; shapes abstracted from nature overlap and retain a relatively unambiguous individual identity; and a rigorous sense of orderliness pervades the composition.

At the time he painted Cubist Landscape, Gris was apparently re-examining his art. Some works of 1917 are compositionally complicated and brightly colored, recalling works from 1913 to 1915. Others, including the Meadows painting, have an austerity of color and composition that reflects the artist’s darker, war-induced feelings of this era.

Cubist Landscape was cleaned in the early nineties, with revelatory results. The varnish which covered the surface had darkened significantly, destroying the color and value balance of the painting. The cleaning process, rebalancing Gris’s color intentions, reinstated the clarity of the various individual shapes; pictorial solidity and coherence were regained.

Juan Gris, pseudónimo de José Vitoriano González Pérez, desarrolló durante su vida una distintiva variante del cubismo sintético. Generalmente las superficies de sus obras tienen una calidad metálica y sus formas, abstraídas de la misma naturaleza sensible, poseen afiliados bordes. Todo ello queda rigurosamente ordenado a través de las líneas compositivas de sus imágenes. Durante el periodo en el que concibió Paisaje cubista, Gris revisaba el estilo hasta entonces empleando, tal y como se observa en el cuadro del Meadows del que se desprende cierta austeridad en el uso del color y la composición que se separan de sus obras anteriores.

El cuadro fue eficientemente limpiado en a principios de la década de 1990, recuperando sus calidades cromáticas, la fuerza plástica de sus formas y su equilibrio compositivo.

Provenance
Léonce Rosenberg (Galerie de l’Effort Moderne, Paris), c. 1917, stock no. 5.118; (Galerie Georges Bernheim, Paris); (Galerie Simon, Paris), until 1940, stock no. 0.946; (Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris), 1940, until mid-1950s; (Saidenberg Gallery, New York), c. 1955; Herbert Lust, Chicago; (sale, Sotheby’s, London), 23 October 1963; (Marlborough Gallery, New York); Algur H. Meadows, Dallas, Texas; donated to Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, 1967.