Descripción
Neither this poster nor its motif has been reproduced on any other posters. Guillaume Apollinaire met Picasso in 1905. From that time on they were inseparable. Apollinaire was a poet, writer and journalist, and because of his great sensitivity, also a great art critic.
Apollinaire and Picasso were involved in very compromising situations together, such as their involvement in the disappearance of some ancient Iberian statuettes that they had carelessly bought from Géry Pieret, a young Belgian who had been Apollinaire’s secretary and who had stolen the statuettes.
Picasso made several drawings of Apollinaire, some serious and others with his own biting humour. It has been mistakenly said that the big, fat jester in the painting “Family of Saltimbanques” is Apollinaire. This interpretation is false, as Daix points out, because Apollinaire was neither as tall compared to Picasso, who is the Harlequin on the far left of the painting, nor as far aft (as evidenced by the drawing of the same period discussed here), and he was also “in the full flower of youth,” being only a year older than Picasso. For Picasso, Apollinaire “embodies the infinite reach of poetry.”
In the drawing of Apollinaire reproduced on the poster, there is a variation, Apollinaire’s name is in large red letters on the paper he holds in his hand, which is presumably the speech he will give on the day of his entry into the Illusions company of the French Academy. Picasso’s powers of observation and synthesis, his talent for portraiture, and his ability to capture personalities made him a great caricaturist. Feliz Feneón, the celebrated critic famous for discovering talented young artists, once advised him to devote himself to caricatures.
