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knowledge of the area. For this excess of
caution he was harshly criticized by the
aggressive soldier P
EDRO
DE
A
LVA R A D O
, who
was one of his officers and who denounced
him to Velázquez. Grijalva was stripped of
his authority to continue the exploration
and was replaced in command of the next
expedition, which left Cuba at the end of
1518, by H
ERNÁN
C
ORTÉS
, with Alvarado as
his deputy. Grijalva remained marginalized
during the conquest of Mexico and was
denied any opportunity to emerge from dis-
grace by the spite of Cortés and his allies. It
was not until 1527 that Grijalva found an
opportunity to advance himself by securing
an appointment under the command of
P
EDRARIAS
D
ÁVILA
. He made his way to a
gold-rich district where he might have
made his fortune had he not been, almost
immediately, killed in an Indian uprising.
Grijalva is one of those lesser figures in
the story of Spain's conquest of the Ameri-
cas. Like the majority of the conquistado-
res, he did not cover himself with glory nor
did he gain riches or titles. Even his failures
were more pathetic than spectacular. Yet he
had the distinction of being the first to gaze
upon the land that others would conquer,
to communicate with the indigenous peo-
ples of Mexico, and, thus, to be the precur-
sor of a century of conquest.
compatriot P
ABLO
P
ICASSO
. Under their influ-
ence he joined the cubist movement. Pos-
sessing a strongly disciplined mind and
influenced by his scientific training, Gris
found the geometric and logically ordered
patterns of cubism particularly appealing.
Gris moved beyond the Analytic School of
Cubism, whose techniques he quickly
absorbed, and entered the so-called Synthetic
School, making use of an analysis of geo-
metrical forms and planes and the additional
dimension of collage. His
Still-Life
(1911)
shows his preoccupation with the pictorial
visualization of time and space through a
physical representation of the possibilities of
human perception. His presentation of fun-
damental elements in a simplified form cre-
ated a high degree of abstraction. This
approach found its natural expression in his
preference for still-lifes; nevertheless, Gris
did occasionally venture into figurative paint-
ing, most notably in
The Smoker
(1913), in
which he invites comparison with the ana-
lytic approach of Picasso, Braque, and others,
while asserting his own precise approach in
the geometrical division of the painting into
distinct areas devoted to particular aspects of
the figure. This picture has been compared to
a jigsaw puzzle in which the viewer is
required to reassemble the separate elements
of the painting into a meaningful whole.
The artistic career of Gris was a relatively
short one. Having continued his study of
drawing in Paris and supported himself by
working as an illustrator, he did not begin
to exhibit publicly until 1912. After the
outbreak of World War I (1914) he moved
to the south of France, where he attracted
the admiration of Henri Matisse, although
he was not necessarily influenced by the
better-known painter. Shortly after the war
(1919) he had a major exhibition (in Paris),
Gris, Juan (José Victoriano
González Pérez)
(1887-1927)
Spanish artist
González Pérez, who adopted the name Juan
Gris, was born in M
ADRID
and studied paint-
ing, illustration, and drawing there. He
moved to Paris in 1906, where he became
associated with such leading painters as
Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and his
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