The Smoker in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection was painted at Céret in September 1913. Juan Gris had spent from the beginning of August to the end of October in this town in the French Pyrenees — “The Mecca of Cubism,” as Kahnweiler called it — where he coincided for a few days with Picasso, a fellow Spaniard and neighbour in the Bateau-Lavoir, whom Gris called “maestro.”...
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