Family and early life in 1914 Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki was born in Rome, Italy, and was raised speaking French, Italian, and
Polish. 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 near
Navahrudak,
Grodno Governorate (former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, present-day
Belarus). His maternal grandfather participated in the 1863 uprising against occupying Russia and had to emigrate when the uprising failed. Apollinaire's father is unknown but may have been Francesco Costantino Camillo Flugi d'Aspermont (born 1835), a
Graubünden 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 in
Romansh Putèr (an official language dialect of Switzerland spoken in Upper
Engadin), and perhaps also descendant of the
Minnesänger Oswald von Wolkenstein (born c. 1377, died 2 August 1445; see
Les ancêtres Grisons du poète Guillaume Apollinaire at
Geneanet).
Paris Apollinaire eventually moved from Rome to Paris in 1900 and became one of the most popular members of the artistic communities of Paris (both in
Montmartre and
Montparnasse). His friends and collaborators in that period included
Pablo Picasso,
Henri Rousseau,
Gertrude Stein,
Max Jacob,
André Salmon,
André Breton,
André Derain,
Faik Konitza,
Blaise Cendrars,
Giuseppe Ungaretti,
Pierre Reverdy,
Alexandra Exter,
Jean Cocteau,
Erik Satie,
Ossip Zadkine,
Marc Chagall,
Marcel Duchamp and
Jean Metzinger. He became romantically involved with
Marie Laurencin, who is often identified as his muse. While there, he dabbled in
anarchism and spoke out as a
Dreyfusard in defense of Dreyfus's innocence. Metzinger painted the first Cubist portrait of Apollinaire. In his
Vie 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 by
Louis Marcoussis,
Amedeo Modigliani,
Mikhail Larionov and Picasso. In 1911 Apollinaire joined the Puteaux Group, a branch of the Cubist movement soon to be known as the
Section 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. On 7 September 1911, police arrested and jailed Apollinaire on suspicion of aiding and abetting the theft of the
Mona Lisa and a number of Egyptian statuettes from the
Louvre, 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 the
Paris-Journal. Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who had bought
Iberian statues from Pieret, and who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of the
Mona Lisa, but he was also exonerated. 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. The artists involved with this new movement, according to Apollinaire, included Pablo Picasso (who represented Apollinaire in his Three Musicians'' painting),
Georges Braque,
Jean Metzinger,
Albert Gleizes,
Robert Delaunay,
Fernand Léger, and
Henri Le Fauconnier. By 1912 others had joined the Cubists:
Jacques Villon,
Marcel Duchamp,
Raymond Duchamp-Villon,
Francis Picabia,
Juan Gris, and
Roger de La Fresnaye, among them. Apollinaire prophesized that Marcel Duchamp could reconcile art and the people. '' painting is believed to represent Apollinaire.
Orphism The term
Orphism was coined by Apollinaire at the Salon de la
Section d'Or in 1912, referring to the works of
Robert Delaunay and
František Kupka. During his lecture at the Section d'Or exhibit Apollinaire presented three of Kupka's abstract works as perfect examples of
pure painting, as anti-figurative as music. In 2025, New York's Guggenheim Museum mounted a major retrospective on Orphism, an oft-overlooked artistic movement.
Surrealism The term Surrealism was first used by Apollinaire concerning the ballet
Parade in 1917. The poet
Arthur 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 to
Paul 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'']. He described
Parade 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.
World War I and death 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. He wrote
Les Mamelles de Tirésias while recovering from this wound. During this period he coined the word "
Surrealism" in the programme notes for
Jean Cocteau and
Erik Satie's ballet
Parade, 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 the
Marquis de Sade, whose works were for a long time obscure, yet arising in popularity as an influence upon the
Dada and Surrealist art movements going on in Montparnasse at the beginning of the twentieth century as, "The freest spirit that ever existed." 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 to have "Died for France" (
Mort pour la France) by the French government. He was interred in the
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. ==Works==