Barry Neild 

Juan Gris celebrated in a Google doodle

Google has transformed its logo using cubist imagery to mark the 125th anniversary of surrealist artists' birth
  
  

Google doodle
Google doodle on the Spanish surrealist painter Juan Gris. Photograph: screengrab Photograph: Screengrab

The Spanish surrealist painter Juan Gris is the latest cultural figure to be honoured with a Google doodle.

To mark the 125th anniversary of the artist's birth, the search engine has transformed its logo using cubist imagery he helped pioneer.

Gris was born José Victoriano Carmelo Carlos González-Pérez in Madrid on 23 March 1887. After studying art in Spain he moved to Paris in 1906 where he became a friend and contemporary of artists including Henri Matisse and Amodeo Modigliani.

By 1910 he had developed his his own cubist style. His work typically featured jagged and angular arrangements of objects or people painted using a palette of muted tones.

Google's doodle features stylised representations of musical instruments - familiar components of Gris's surrealistic vocabulary.

Gris, whose painting Violon et Guitare sold for $28.6m at auction in New York in 2010, was also acquainted with fellow Spaniard Picasso, whom he regarded as his mentor. His 1912 Portrait of Picasso is claimed to be the first cubist work not painted by Picasso or the French painter Georges Braque.

Gris died in 1927 aged 40 after suffering from chronic kidney failure.

 

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