"Still Life with Fruits" (1915-1916) is a prime example of Gris reinventing how humble subject matter could be rendered by composing fractured forms and layering them like household detritus in a compressed and distorted space. The other shapes and forms in the picture are both orderly and similarly contradictory, creating a cacophony that Gris controls by relative size, pinpoint alignments, and internal rhythms. Kahnweiler said that Gris was “the only major cubist to succeed in harnessing mathematical calculation to artistic expression.”.

Richard S. Davis (1917-1985), chief curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1946-1956; director, 1956-1959; presumably traded c. 1974 to
E.V. Thaw & Co., New York; c. 1974 to
The Phillips Family Collection, U.S.A