"Juan Gris earned his reputation as a “perfect painter” by creating
exquisite cubist pictures notable for their stunning precision, exact
proportions, and brilliant use of color. Although Gris did not begin to
experiment with cubist principles until 1911, he quickly established
himself, alongside Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, as one of cubism’s
most eminent exponents.
Still Life with Newspaper has an immaculately smooth
finish and derives its strength from a sense of austerity and cool
restraint rather than excess. The magnificent stillness so
characteristic of the seventeenth-century paintings of Francisco de
Zurbarán – an artist whom Gris admired – is present in this taut
arrangement of crisply contoured geometric shapes."
Text and Image copied from:
http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/browse-the-collection/index.aspx?id=0856