Guillaume Apollinaire

Louis Marcoussis made his first prints in 1911-12, after a number of years in Paris. Guillaume Apollinaire, who had introduced the young artist to Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, encouraged him early on in his endeavors. A methodical and often brilliant printmaker, Marcoussis built upon his early achievements in the prints he produced in the 1920s and 30s. In all, Marcoussis produced 210 etchings and drypoints, plus a handful of prints in other media, including this rare lithograph.

Apollinaire, the subject of this portrait, was Cubism’s greatest champion and the movement’s most renowned poet. Marcoussis returned the compliment of Apollinaire’s seminal support of his early printmaking activity in several outstanding portrait prints, four in all, made in 1911, 1920, and 1934, as well as this work, which appeared three years after the memorable images of the critic and writer, and rack among the extraordinary iconic images of Cubist printmaking. In each, Apollinaire is enshrined in a study among bound volumes of his writings, and compositional changes in this version―including an enlarged face and torso pushed to the foreground―show Marcoussis striving for a more intimate, and, at the same time, more demonstrative tribute to his great mentor and friend.