LOUIS MARCOUSSIS (1883-1941)

Ludwig Markus was born in Poland, but worked in France from 1903 on, becoming a French citizen in 1914. In 1910 he met another Polish expatriate, Wilhelm Apollinairis de Kostrowitzky (1880-1918), who since 1903 had signed his poems as Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire suggested that Markus change his name to Marcoussis after a town outside Paris. Moreover, the poet praised his fellow countryman’s work in the 1912 Salon d’Automne and Section d’Or exhibitions, and as a fervent supporter of Cubism, introduced him to Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.

The composition represents the artist’s second attempt at his friend’s likeness. Marcoussis executed the first etched portrait, dated 1912, from life. It shows Apollinaire in a tufted chair, holding his pipe and reading his recently completed poem Zone. The coat-of-arms of the writer’s family appears at the upper left, and inscribed above his head are the titles of his books.

Marcoussis undertook the second version, which is dated on the plate 1912-20, sometime after he abandoned the first. He completed it in 1920, two years after Apollinaire died from influenza. Historians have debated whether or not the intersecting lines on the poet’s forehead were meant to be a war-related bandage or marks reflecting calculations of the Golden Mean, a system of proportion that interested the artist.