Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire

Apollinaire (Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky,1880- 1918), a poet of illegitimate birth and mixed Polish and Italian ancestry, settled in Paris and began signing his poems Guillaume Apollinaire in 1903. He mixed with a circle of artists and writers that included Picasso and the author Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), and became the lover of the painter Marie Laurencin (1885-1956). He edited a number of reviews, published satirical and semi-porno­ graphic texts, and proclaimed that the writings of the Marquis de Sade would dominate the 20th century. In 1918, Apollinaire died from wounds he suffered during the First World War. His stature as a forerunner of Surre­alism continued to grow after his death, largely due to the intense eroticism and highly original verbal and typographical styles that are the hallmarks of his work (see his Calligrammes, Paris, 1918).