Braque is debatable; however, she was introduced to Picasso by the writer Henri Pierre Roché (1879-1959), and an interest in the different types of Cubism and the work of several Cubist painters penetrated every aspect of her work for decades to come.36
3.12 Newspaper collage, circa 1920, board, newspaper, paper, paint © NMI
Synthetic Cubism formed a new pictorial language for Gray and she enriched her pictorial compositions through the use of lettering, sheets of music and newspapers. In one early work on board she also created a collage entirely of newspaper.37 Gray also explored the use of wallpaper, theatre programmes and posters advertisements. Then from the mid to late 1920s Gray began using geographical motifs from maps in her artwork. Gray was similar to Braque and Picasso in that her use of lettering usually formed a coded visual image for the viewer to decipher.38 Her fondness for travel and maps appeared on the wall of the living room of the house E.1027 on which Gray hung a large marine chart with stencilled letters which acted as a code. In her own house Tempe à Pailla, in the dining area, she placed a large map of the excavations at Teotihuacán in Mexico. When the Sunday Times journalist Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) interviewed Gray at age 93 in her apartment in Paris he was so impressed by a collage which she had completed of a map of Patagonia that he offered to purchase it.39 His interest resulted in his journey there and his most renowned publication Patagonia, 1977. These geographical locations and motifs from maps all have meaning and symbolism in Gray’s work. As a result she created motifs, representing geographical locations, which she used in her collages. One collage is of the Roquebrune coastline in the south of France and may have been intended as a mural design similar to the marine map with the stencilled words by Baudelaire Invitation au voyage in the living room of E.1027. The collage consists of a bespeckled ground with black, off white, purple, blue, grey and white. Gray had an enduring interest in remote locales and the overall effect is nautical. A central motif composed of curved line represents the exact location of the house E.1027 and where it is situated at Roquebrune.40 Maps appear in other collages which she did during this period using a similar system.41
3.13 Roquebrune collage, 1926, paper, paint © NMI
Other gouaches contain architectural motifs or represented abstract plans of buildings.42 One collage completed in 1931-34 is a site plan for her house Tempe à Pailla.43 There are similarities in the shapes, forms and layout of a coloured site plan which is in Gray’s archives.44 This abstract collage is a larger scale version of the plan. Gray had a number of collage pieces which she used as stencils in her collages.45 These ‘design elements’ as she called them were also used in some of her carpet designs and appear in her architectural portfolios.46 One large square gouache, with a black speckled ground with black linear designs, has in the upper right corner a half circle and plant-like formation similar to the collage elements.47 Gray used some of these elements to represent trees in a hypothetical architectural project she designed titled L’Epopée Irlandaise or the Irish Epic. Dating from 1946-47, photographs remain of the model of the stage set, with rocks and trees.48
3.14 Green, white, blue gouache and collage, 1930s, paper, paint © NMI
By the 1930s Gray changed her style again, paring down her use of coded letters and words. She began a series of black and white Cubist-inspired paper collages with triangular motifs.49 She also injected these monochromatic collages with singular motifs completed in bold bright colours.50 Gray also used circular motifs and circles throughout, with these black and white gouaches which were visually highly effective.51 Some gouaches she actually signed on the back.52
3.15 Black, grey and white gouache with yellow, 1930s, paper, paint © NMI
Gray remained interested in the work of both Braque and Picasso. She purchased the surrealist magazine Documents 3 – published in 1929 which had an article written by Carl Einstein entitled Notes sur le Cubisme with images by Picasso and Braque.53 However, in her notes it is the work of Braque in this particular article which caught her attention. The article illustrates four paintings by Braque which he did in 1912-1914; two figurative works dating 1912 and October 1913, Le Sacré Coeur, 1913, and a Still Life from 1914.54 Gray also continued to follow Picasso’s career. She attended an exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s work and preliminary draw- ings completed for Guernica in 1938, held at the New Burlington Galleries, London. Gray also kept the exhibition catalogue in her personal library.55 She was obviously aware of the social and politically charged art which Picasso produced and by 1938 these were ideas which she herself was exploring at the time. She was very much being directed by an interest in the working-class environment. The idea that modern art was capable of producing an impassioned accusation that was triggered by current political events appealed to Gray greatly. This painting transcended mere social criticism to document the destructive side of human behaviour. Picasso describes in this painting not the German attack on the Basque village but the consequences of that attack. In social terms Eileen Gray’s work aspired to address the consequences of a luxurious and elitist lifestyle and she looked to mass-produced pieces and mass-produced housing for the working class. It was different to the social and political statement of Picasso’s painting but the underlying social implications were the same. Gray saw the face of destruction first hand during the war and this influenced her approach to creating a modern society which catered to people of all levels. Picasso said that ‘Painting was not invented to decorate houses. It is an instrument of war for attack and defence against the enemy’. This statement informed her later attitude against mural painting being used as mere decoration for interiors.
Gray also owned a copy of Du Cubisme et des moyens de le comprendre published in 1920 by the painter Albert Gleizes.56 Gleizes had the most influence over Eileen Gray’s early lacquer work and in some of her carpet designs.57 From about 1910 onward Gleizes had become directly involved with Cubism, both as an artist and as a theorist of the movement. His style had become stripped, linear, consisting of multiple forms and facets