“Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought.”

—Juan Gris

Rideau was one of nine etchings Spanish artist Juan Gris created to illustrate the French-language Dadaist play Mouchoir de Nuages (Cloud Handkerchief), written by Romanian-born author Tristan Tzara; Tzara had long wanted drawings from Gris, and this publication is their only collaboration, as well as the only book Gris illustrated with etchings. The play was first performed a year before the illustrated book was published, in 1924 at the Théâtre de la Cigale in Paris. That same year, Gris had embarked on his own pursuits in the realm of performing arts, crafting the set designs and costumes for the Parisian Ballets Russes under its founder, Sergei Diaghilev. While most of the book’s etchings focus upon characters in the play, the present print, more abstract in composition, references a set piece: the curtain.

This impression of Rideau is dedicated to André Simon, who was the friend and business partner of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, an art dealer turned publisher and writer who became an early champion of Cubism through his Paris galleries: first Galerie Kahnweiler – named for himself – and later Galerie Simon – named after André. Gris was among the many now-famous names on Kahnweiler’s roster, which included Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso. His contracts with these artists gave him the right of first refusal for recent works from those artists’ studios, making Kahnweiler the sole supplier of their Cubist art until the onset of the First World War. Gris featured prominently at his gallery, including a major exhibition in 1924 and a June 1928 retrospective of which commemorated the artist’s untimely death the previous year. As Kahnweiler himself described of Gris’ etchings for Mouchoir de Nuages, “absolutely dominating the craft and the material, he gives the silhouette of each of the characters a calm, almost monumental magnitude.”