Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the most impassioned defenders ofCubism and a forefather ofSurrealism. He is credited with coining the term "Cubism"[2] in 1911 to describe the emergingart movement, the termOrphism in 1912, and the term "Surrealism" in 1917 to describe the works ofErik Satie. He wrote poems without punctuation, in his attempt to be resolutely modern in both form and subject.[3] Apollinaire wrote one of the earliest Surrealist literary works, the playThe Breasts of Tiresias (1917), which became the basis forFrancis Poulenc's 1947 operaLes mamelles de Tirésias.
Influenced by Symbolist poetry in his youth, he was admired during his lifetime by the young poets who later formed the nucleus of the Surrealist group (Breton,Aragon,Soupault). He revealed very early on an originality that freed him from any school of influence and made him one of the precursors of the literary revolution of the first half of the 20th century. His art is not based on any theory, but on a simple principle: the act of creating must come from the imagination, from intuition, because it must be as close as possible to life, to nature, to the environment, and to the human being.
Two years after being wounded inWorld War I, Apollinaire died during theSpanish flu pandemic of 1918 and was recognized as "Fallen for France" (Mort pour la France) because of his commitment during the war.[4]
Apollinaire (left) andAndré Rouveyre in 1914Apollinaire, 1902, Cologne
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki was born in Rome, Italy, and was raised speaking French, Italian, andPolish.[5] He emigrated to France in his late teens and adopted the name Guillaume Apollinaire. His mother, born Angelika Kostrowicka, was a Polish-Lithuanian noblewoman born nearNavahrudak,Grodno Governorate (former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, present-dayBelarus). His maternal grandfather participated in the 1863 uprising against occupying Russia and had to emigrate when the uprising failed.[6] Apollinaire's father is unknown but may have been Francesco Costantino Camillo Flugi d'Aspermont (born 1835), aGraubünden aristocrat who disappeared early from Apollinaire's life. Francesco Flugi d'Aspermont was a nephew of Conradin Flugi d'Aspermont (1787–1874), a poet who wrote inLadinPutèr (an official language dialect of Switzerland spoken in UpperEngadin), and perhaps also descendant of theMinnesängerOswald von Wolkenstein (born c. 1377, died 2 August 1445; seeLes ancêtres Grisons du poète Guillaume Apollinaire atGeneanet).
Metzinger painted the first Cubist portrait of Apollinaire. In hisVie anecdotique (16 October 1911), the poet proudly writes: "I am honoured to be the first model of a Cubist painter, Jean Metzinger, for a portrait exhibited in 1910 at the Salon des Indépendants." It was not only the first Cubist portrait, according to Apollinaire, but it was also the first great portrait of the poet exhibited in public, prior to others byLouis Marcoussis,Amedeo Modigliani,Mikhail Larionov and Picasso.[9]
"La Joconde est Retrouvée" (The Mona Lisa is Found),Le Petit Parisien, No. 13559, 13 December 1913
In 1911 Apollinaire joined the Puteaux Group, a branch of the Cubist movement soon to be known as theSection d'Or. He delivered the opening address of the 1912 Salon de la Section d'Or — the most important pre-World War I Cubist exhibition.[10][11]
On 7 September 1911, police arrested and jailed Apollinaire on suspicion of aiding and abetting the theft of theMona Lisa and a number of Egyptian statuettes from theLouvre,[5][12] but released him a week later. The theft of the statues had been committed in 1907 by a former secretary of Apollinaire, Honoré Joseph Géry Pieret, who had recently returned one of the stolen statues to the French newspaper theParis-Journal.[13] Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who had boughtIberian statues from Pieret, and who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of theMona Lisa, but he was also exonerated.[14][13] In fact, the theft of theMona Lisa was perpetrated byVincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter who acted alone and was only caught two years later when he tried to sell the painting in Florence.
Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris;VIII Salon des Indépendants, Brussels, 1911.[15] In an open-handed preface to the catalogue of the Brussels Indépendants show, Apollinaire stated that these 'new painters' accepted the name of Cubists which has been given to them. He described Cubism as a new manifestation and high art [manifestation nouvelle et très élevée de l'art], not a system that constrains talent [non-point un système contraignant les talents], and the differences which characterize not only the talents but even the styles of these artists are an obvious proof of this.[16][17] The artists involved with this new movement, according to Apollinaire, includedPablo Picasso (who represented Apollinaire in hisThree Musicians painting),Georges Braque,Jean Metzinger,Albert Gleizes,Robert Delaunay,Fernand Léger, andHenri Le Fauconnier.[18] By 1912 others had joined the Cubists:Jacques Villon,Marcel Duchamp,Raymond Duchamp-Villon,Francis Picabia,Juan Gris, andRoger de La Fresnaye, among them.[16][19][20][21] Apollinaire prophesized that Marcel Duchamp could reconcile art and the people.[22]
The leftmost figure in Pablo Picasso'sThree Musicians painting is believed to represent Apollinaire.
The termOrphism was coined by Apollinaire at the Salon de laSection d'Or in 1912, referring to the works ofRobert Delaunay andFrantišek Kupka. During his lecture at the Section d'Or exhibit Apollinaire presented three of Kupka's abstract works as perfect examples ofpure painting, as anti-figurative as music.[20]
InLes Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques (1913) Apollinaire described Orphism as "the art of painting new totalities with elements that the artist does not take from visual reality, but creates entirely by himself. [...] An Orphic painter's works should convey anuntroubledaesthetic pleasure, but at the same time ameaningful structure and sublime significance. According to Apollinaire Orphism represented a move towards a completely new art-form, much as music was to literature.[23] In 2025, New York's Guggenheim Museum mounted a major retrospective on Orphism, an oft-overlooked artistic movement.
The term Surrealism was first used by Apollinaire concerning the balletParade in 1917. The poetArthur Rimbaud wanted to be a visionary, to perceive the hidden side of things within the realm of another reality. In continuity with Rimbaud, Apollinaire went in search of a hidden and mysterious reality. The term "surrealism" appeared for the first time in March 1917 (Chronologie de Dada et du surréalisme, 1917) in a letter by Apollinaire toPaul Dermée: "All things considered, I think in fact it is better to adopt surrealism than supernaturalism, which I first used" [Tout bien examiné, je crois en effet qu'il vaut mieux adopter surréalisme que surnaturalisme que j'avais d'abord employé].[24]
He describedParade as "a kind of surrealism" (une sorte de surréalisme) when he wrote the program note the following week, thus coining the word three years before Surrealism emerged as an art movement in Paris.[25]
Apollinaire served as an infantry officer inWorld War I and, in 1916, received a serious shrapnel wound to the temple, from which he would never fully recover.[7] He wroteLes Mamelles de Tirésias while recovering from this wound. During this period he coined the word "Surrealism" in the programme notes forJean Cocteau andErik Satie's balletParade, first performed on 18 May 1917. He also published an artistic manifesto,L'Esprit nouveau et les poètes. Apollinaire's status as a literary critic is most famous and influential in his recognition of theMarquis de Sade, whose works were for a long time obscure,[citation needed] yet arising in popularity as an influence upon theDada and Surrealist art movements going on in Montparnasse at the beginning of the twentieth century as, "The freest spirit that ever existed."[citation needed]
The war-weakened Apollinaire died at the age of 38 on 9 November 1918 ofinfluenza during theSpanish flu pandemic of 1918 ravaging Europe at the time, two years after being wounded inWorld War I.[7] Due to his military service for the duration of the war, he was declared to have "Died for France" (Mort pour la France) by the French government.[4] He was interred in thePère Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
In 1900 he wrote his first novelMirely, ou le petit trou pas cher (pornographic), which was eventually lost.[7] Apollinaire's first collection of poetry wasL'enchanteur pourrissant (1909), butAlcools (1913) established his reputation. The poems, influenced in part by theSymbolists, juxtapose the old and the new, combining traditional poetic forms with modern imagery. In 1913, Apollinaire published the essayLes Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques on theCubist painters, a movement which he helped to define. He also coined the termorphism to describe a tendency towards absolute abstraction in the paintings ofRobert Delaunay and others. In 1917, Apollinaire producedPeintures de Léopold Survage; Dessins et aquarelles d’Irène Lagut (Paintings by Léopold Survage; Drawings and Watercolors by Irène Lagut), which is included in the permanent collection of Pérez Art Museum Miami, in the United States.[26]
In 1907 Apollinaire published the well-knownerotic novel,The Eleven Thousand Rods (Les Onze Mille Verges).[27][28] Officially banned in France until 1970, various printings of it circulated widely for many years. Apollinaire never publicly acknowledged authorship of the novel. Another erotic novel attributed to him wasThe Exploits of a YoungDon Juan (Les exploits d'un jeune Don Juan), in which the 15-year-old hero fathers three children with various members of his entourage, including his aunt.[29][30] Apollinaire's gift to Picasso of the original 1907 manuscript was one of the artist's most prized possessions.[31] The book was made into amovie in 1986.
Shortly after his death, Mercure de France publishedCalligrammes, a collection of hisconcrete poetry (poetry in which typography and layout adds to the overall effect), and more orthodox, though still modernist poems informed by Apollinaire's experiences in the First World War and in which he often used the technique of automatic writing.
In his youth Apollinaire lived for a short while inBelgium, mastering theWalloon dialect sufficiently to write poetry, some of which has survived.
French composerFrancis Poulenc has set Apollinaire's poems to music in his five-part song cycleBanalités (1940), which in turned inspiredPink Martini's songSympathique (je ne veux pas travailler) in 1997.
Dutch composerMarjo Tal set some of Apollinaire’s poetry to music.[39]
French composerDenise Roger set Apollinaire’s poetry to music.[40]
Apollinaire is played bySeth Gabel in the 2018 television seriesGenius, which focuses on the life and work of Pablo Picasso.
^His full birth name inPolish isWilhelm-Albert-Włodzimierz-Aleksander-Apolinary Kostrowicki (Belarusian:Гіём-Альберт-Уладзімір-Аляксандр-Апалінарый Кастравіцкі) of theWąż coat of arms.
^abKrauss, Rosalind (2016). "1911". In Hal Foster; Rosalind E. Krauss; Yve-Alain Bois; B. H. D. Buchloh; David Joselit (eds.).Art since 1900: modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism (3rd ed.). London: Thames & Hudson. p. 118.ISBN978-0-500-23953-7.OCLC958112079.
^Daniel Robbins, 1985,Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, Jean Metzinger: At the Center of Cubism, University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, J. Paul Getty Trust, University of Washington Press, pp. 9–23
^Apollinaire, Guillaume (7 August 1913).Les peintres cubistes. Première série. Tous les arts. Eugène Figuière et cie, éditeurs – via library.metmuseum.org Library Catalog.
^Gleizes, Albert; Metzinger, Jean (1912).Du "Cubisme" (in French and English). Paris: Eugène Figuière Éditeurs.
^Hajo Düchting,Orphism, MoMA, From Grove Art Online, 2009 Oxford University Press.
^Jean-Paul Clébert,Dictionnaire du surréalisme, A.T.P. & Le Seuil, Chamalières, p. 17, 1996.
^Hargrove, Nancy (1998). "The Great Parade: Cocteau, Picasso, Satie, Massine, Diaghilev – and T.S. Eliot".Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 31 (1)
^Roger Shattuck,The Banquet Years: the arts in France, 1885–1918: Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, Guillaume Apollinaire,Doubleday, 1961, p. 268.
![A Calligramme by Guillaume Apollinaire[32]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aGuillaume_Apollinaire%2c_Po%25C3%25A8me_Calligramme.jpg)
