The artwork “Bottles and Knife” was created by Juan Gris between 1911 and 1912. It is an oil on canvas measuring 54.6 x 46 cm and is held at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands. This piece is an exemplary work of Analytical Cubism, a movement which Gris contributed to significantly. The genre of the artwork is still life.
In “Bottles and Knife,” the artwork features a composition fragmented into geometric shapes and planes, characteristic of the Analytical Cubism style. Unlike other cubist works, Gris’s palette tends to be more subdued, focusing on a range of grays and earth tones that highlight the interplay of light and shadow. The objects depicted—a knife and bottles—are broken down into multifaceted forms that merge and overlap, challenging traditional perspectives. Yet despite this fragmentation, the composition maintains a semblance of representational form, allowing the viewer to identify the elements of a typical still life arrangement. The moderately muted tones help to unify the disparate forms into a cohesive whole, as Gris plays with the relationships between objects and the space around them.
