Juan Gris

Gris arrived in Paris in 1906 and moved into the Bateau-Lavoir, a ramshackle building in Montmartre where Picasso already lived and worked. For a while Gris supported himself drawing satirical illustrations for magazines, learning Cubism at close range from Picasso and Braque before he ever exhibited a painting of his own.

The relationship with Picasso was never simple. Gertrude Stein, who knew them both, said Picasso was irritated by Gris's flattery and unsettled by his talent, and that Gris was the only person Picasso actively wished away. Gris pushed ahead regardless, and after 1913 developed his own version of Cubism, tighter and more geometric than Picasso's or Braque's, built on a visible diagonal scaffolding of flat interlocking planes that critics later called Crystal Cubism.

He worked closely with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, a touring company that had brought Russian dance to Paris, designing sets and costumes in the 1920s, but his health was already failing. Gris died of kidney disease in 1927 outside Paris, at 40, with Picasso among the pallbearers at his funeral.