Picasso, Apollinaire and Gris

El Hispano/Jim Smith

   Philadelphia– The Café life of Paris that prevailed  from the La Grande Guerre- as French veterans referred to WWI- up to post-World War II, produced a lively atmosphere where evenings began with drinking in  the leisurely “European” style and would eventually give way to imbibing in  the “American” style.

   Some of this elegance and polished Savoir faire is captured in the painting by the Spanish artist Juan Gris, in his  1912, Man in a Café, which is part of  the exhibition Picasso and the Avante-Gard in Paris, now showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

    Adopting Picasso’s geometrical forms and   grid structures into his own distinctly legible, humorous and brilliantly colorful style, Gris’s Man in a Café reveals  a modern man of imperially sophisticated and urbane flair.  Donning a top hat, black suit and gripping a glass of green absinthe in one hand he is the image of sartorial splendor.

   Within the painting Gris offered  homage to two of his predecessors and  important figures of that era.   In the bold letters PIC and AP, Gris was referring to Picasso and the writer Guillaume Apollinaire.

     Born in Madrid, Gris brought  rigorous juxtapositions  and illustrative innovations to Cubism, as seen in his “Livre, pipe et verres, which sold for a remarkable $20.8 million. Unlike Picasso, however, who lived to  the age of ninety-two, Gris died in 1927 at the age of forty.  

   A respected art critic and author, Guillame Apollinaire was a staunch defender of Picasso, Gris and other Cubist artists. But, suffering a severe head wound in World War I, Apollinaire also died very early, succumbing to the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918.

   The relationship between Picasso and Apollinaire yielded at least one diverting predicament. A secretary for Apollinaire had developed an unusual habit of pilfering small items from the Louvre Museum.  The Secretary returned one day with a pair of ancient African heads which he promptly offered to Picasso.

    Fascinated by talismanic artifacts, Picasso accepted and used them as models for several works and then left them in a cupboard.

    In 1911, the widely reported theft from the Louvre of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa prompted Apollinaire’s secretary, Gery Pieret, to sell his story of how he had so easily been robbing small items from the Louvre to a Paris newspaper.

   An alarmed Apolinnaire quickly notified Picasso of the turn of events, and the embarrassed writer and painter brought the African heads back to the Newspaper with many apologies.

    Nevertheless, Apollinaire and Picasso were soon called in for questioning by the Paris police, holding Apollinaire for several days.  But they both were released without charges.