Juan Gris

They say Gris was close with Picasso in Paris and got called his disciple early on — not exactly a compliment, from what I can tell, but he'd carved out his own geometric style by the time he painted this one.

Le Journal was a real Paris daily, apparently the one everybody read — and this crowd of painters stuck it into picture after picture, so often it's practically a signature.

From what I've read he painted this in the middle of the war — he was Spanish, so he wasn't called up like most of his friends in Paris, and he just kept working straight through it.

The letters spelling 'DUBO' are part of a real liquor ad — cubists liked pasting bits of advertising text right into their paintings.