Signed Postcard to Guillaume Apollinaire

[Naples, 10 or 11 March 1917].
Three lines on one colour card (90 x 140 mm), postmarked ‘11 mars 1917’, in black ink.

« Bonjour Guillaume, Picasso ».

Written on the back of a postcard depicting a view of the Hotel Vittoria (Naples) and sent to the poet’s Paris address “202 Bd St Germain”.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

Picasso and Apollinaire met for the first time in Paris in 1905: the beginning of an immense mutual admiration. In their thirteen-year relationship, their works engaged in a dialogue, crossed paths and inspired each other, but never merged. Picasso and Apollinaire dreamed of a joint work, which they never completed and left unfinished. History will therefore only remember their friendship and the projects it inspired, with their share of fantasies.

They dedicated poems, drawings and paintings to each other and exchanged their views on the world and life. Apollinaire introduced Picasso to erotic texts, which he specialised in; Picasso is present on the frontispiece of Alcools and Calligrammes.

Apollinaire, who received a piece of shrapnel in his right temple on 17 March 1916, was evacuated to Paris at the end of March. He invited his friend to visit him: ‘My dear Pablo, come and see me if you can today. I’m at the Val de Grâce, room 13. Ask for Kostrowitzky’s place’. Picasso came and produced a famous drawing of his friend with a bandaged head. Calligrammes was published, and Picasso organised a banquet on 31 December 1916 in honour of the poet, who was very weak but still very prestigious with his wound and scar across his skull. He then left for a trip to Italy.

First stop Rome, where he arrived on 17 February 1917. He accompanied Jean Cocteau on a two-month trip. The French playwright had asked the painter to participate in the production of Parade, a ballet inspired by one of his poems. For eight weeks, a Picasso discovered a new world, having only ever known Spain and France. Naples and Pompeii were the next stops.

He visited the treasures of the Archaeological Museum of Naples twice. There he found inspiration that encouraged him to produce works with ancient influences. ‘Antiquity is teeming anew in this Arab Montmartre,’ he said of Naples and its remains, some of them Pompeian. During this stay, Pablo Picasso met the dancer Olga Khokhlova; he first saw her on 9 April 1917, during a performance of the ballet Les Sylphides at the Teatro Costanzi (Rome Opera House). A romance began, and Picasso followed his fiancée to Barcelona, where the ballet Parade was being performed. It was there that the artist introduced her to his family and proposed.

A year later, for the wedding of Picasso and Apollinaire, they would each be each other’s witness: Picasso on 12 July 1918, in an Orthodox church on rue Daru and according to Russian traditions, where Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Valerian Svetlov (a dance critic) gathered to witness the union of Pablo and Olga; two months earlier, in May, Apollinaire had married Jacqueline Ruby [Amelia Kolb]: his witnesses were Madame Lucien Descaves and Pablo Picasso.

The war, with its torments and endless separation, brought them closer than ever.

The last known card between the two men was sent on 5 September 1918 from the Aspe Valley. On 9 November, Guillaume Apollinaire died of Spanish flu and Picasso had just lost his closest friend.

Picasso took advantage of his stay in Italy in 1917 to discover the treasures of the Archaeological Museum of Naples on two occasions. There, he found an inspiration that encouraged him to produce works with ancient influences. ‘Antiquity is teeming anew in this Arab Montmartre,’ he said of Naples and its remains, some of them Pompeian.

The collection of exchanges between Picasso and Apollinaire has largely been collected by the Picasso Museum in Paris. The museum holds all the correspondence sent by the painter to his friend Guillaume, with the notable exception of this postcard. Pithy, certainly, but a testament to a friendship where little needs to be said to be revived.