La Pipe. From au Soleil du Plafond. First edition.

Color lithograph. 43 x 33 cm. One of 220 impressions printed by Mourlot. Ref: Douglas Cooper, Juan Gris, Catalogue Raisonné, Revised edition 2014, no. L.11. Based on the gouache, Cooper 163a.In 1915, the artist's dealer Léonce Rosenberg (1879-1947) came up with the idea of publishing a facsimile of manuscript poems by Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960) illustrated by Juan Gris. The projectnever took place during the artist's lifetime. Juan Gris died in 1927, having completed only about half of the images. As a result, only eleven lithographs accompany the twenty poems in the book. The bookwas published in 1955, almost forty years from the first efforts and 28 years after the artist's death. The publisher is known as Tériade (1897-1983). He was born in Lesbos, Greece as Efstratios Eleftheriades.He worked with his fellow Greek expatriate Christian Zervos in Paris on the art journal Cahiers d'art and began his own publishing company with the deluxe art journal Verve in 1937. Tériade published about 20 important livres d'artiste with original graphic works by the major Ecole de Paris artists.The lithographs relate to the artist's paintings from an important period (circa 1916) and are therefore included in this catalogue. They are not considered as original works by the artist since they were created after the artist's gouaches by the printer Fernand Mourlot (1895-1988).