28 Facts About Guillaume Apollinaire

1.

Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent.

2.

Guillaume Apollinaire is credited with coining the term "Cubism" in 1911 to describe the emerging art movement, the term Orphism in 1912, and the term "Surrealism" in 1917 to describe the works of Erik Satie.

3.

Guillaume Apollinaire wrote poems without punctuation attempting to be resolutely modern in both form and subject.

4.

Guillaume Apollinaire wrote one of the earliest Surrealist literary works, the play The Breasts of Tiresias, which became the basis for Francis Poulenc's 1947 opera Les mamelles de Tiresias.

5.

Guillaume Apollinaire 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.

6.

Guillaume Apollinaire's 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.

7.

Guillaume Apollinaire was active as a journalist and art critic for Le Matin, L'Intransigeant, L'Esprit nouveau, Mercure de France, and Paris Journal.

8.

In 1912 Guillaume Apollinaire cofounded Les Soirees de Paris, an artistic and literary magazine.

9.

Two years after being wounded in World War I, Guillaume Apollinaire died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and was recognized as "Fallen for France" because of his commitment during the war.

10.

Guillaume Apollinaire emigrated to France in his late teens and adopted the name Guillaume Apollinaire.

11.

Guillaume Apollinaire's mother, born Angelika Kostrowicka, was a Polish-Lithuanian noblewoman born near Navahrudak, Grodno Governorate.

12.

Guillaume Apollinaire eventually moved from Rome to Paris in 1900 and became one of the most popular members of the artistic community of Paris.

13.

Guillaume Apollinaire became romantically involved with Marie Laurencin, who is often identified as his muse.

14.

Guillaume Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who had bought Iberian statues from Pieret, and who was brought in for questioning in the theft of the Mona Lisa, but he was exonerated.

15.

Guillaume Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris; VIII Salon des Independants, Brussels, 1911.

16.

Guillaume Apollinaire described Cubism as a new manifestation and high art [manifestation nouvelle et tres elevee de l'art], not a system that constrains talent [non-point un systeme 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.

17.

The artists involved with this new movement, according to Guillaume Apollinaire, included Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Leger, and Henri Le Fauconnier.

18.

The term Surrealism was first used by Guillaume Apollinaire concerning the ballet Parade in 1917.

19.

In continuity with Rimbaud, Guillaume Apollinaire went in search of a hidden and mysterious reality.

20.

Guillaume Apollinaire described Parade as "a kind of surrealism" when he wrote the program note the following week, thus coining the word three years before Surrealism emerged as an art movement in Paris.

21.

Guillaume Apollinaire served as an infantry officer in World War I and, in 1916, received a serious shrapnel wound to the temple, from which he would never fully recover.

22.

Guillaume Apollinaire wrote Les Mamelles de Tiresias while recovering from this wound.

23.

Guillaume Apollinaire published an artistic manifesto, L'Esprit nouveau et les poetes.

24.

The war-weakened Apollinaire died at the age of 38 on 9 November 1918 of influenza during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 ravaging Europe at the time, two years after being wounded in World War I Due to his military service for the duration of the war, he was declared "Dead for France" by the French government.

25.

Guillaume Apollinaire was interred in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.

26.

In 1913, Guillaume Apollinaire published the essay Les Peintres Cubistes, Meditations Esthetiques on the Cubist painters, a movement which he helped to define.

27.

Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term orphism to describe a tendency towards absolute abstraction in the paintings of Robert Delaunay and others.

28.

In 1907 Guillaume Apollinaire published the well-known erotic novel, The Eleven Thousand Rods.