Ace of Clubs and Four of Diamonds

Juan Gris

National Gallery of Art

We look down at a wooden tabletop with two playing cards among stacked rectangles and wedges in this vertical, abstract painting. The two playing cards we can make out are a four of diamonds to our left and an ace of clubs to our right. The ace shifts from the traditional black club on a white background to a moss-green club on a black background on the top half. The other rectangles could be upside-down cards, though they are larger in scale than the face-up playing cards. These shapes are made with pea-green dots on a black background, areas of textured silvery olive green, and sky blue. The cards lie on a mostly complete corner of a table painted with wood grain, but triangles of wood grain, green polka dots, and blue intersect and bisect each other. A wide fern-green form with rounded lobes hanging from it fills the upper left corner, perhaps representing a tree. The area to its right is filled with baby blue edged with white. The artist signed the lower right, “Juan Gris.”