Artist.  He was one of the outstanding figures of Cubism,  along with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.  Gris developed a personal interpretation of this style,  called “Synthetic Cubism”,  in which the objects of his paintings are more clearly defined and brightly colored.  He often used elements of collage in his works.  Most of them are still lifes,  though he also produced several portraits and occasional landscapes.  He was born José Victoriano González Pérez in Madrid,  Spain,  and studied at its School of Arts and Sciences from 1902 to 1904.  Renaming himself Juan Gris,  he moved to Paris in 1906 and eked out a living as a newspaper cartoonist while becoming friends with many artists,  among them Picasso,  Braque,  and Matisse,  all of whom influenced his style.  He took up painting seriously in 1910 and produced his first Cubist canvases two years later.  Writer Gertrude Stein acted as his patron in the early part of his career.  Gris lived in poverty until after World War I,  when his paintings suddenly became fashionable in France and Germany.  He went on to design sets and costumes for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and in 1924 delivered an important lecture at the Sorbonne,  “On the Possibilities of Painting”.  Long plagued by ill health,  he died of uremia at 40.  Of the three major Cubists, only Gris adhered to its methods throughout his (comparatively short) professional life.  His initial paintings are monochrome and metallic,  though he soon introduced a brilliant color sense.  The war years and their immediate aftermath are considered his peak period,  with his compositions assuming a stately grandeur;  Gris referred to his technique at the time as “flat,  colored architecture”.  Critics are divided over his late works,  which seem to waver between decorative complexity (with hints of realism) and greatly simplified forms. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)