Guillaume Apollinaire
(26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki.
Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the early 20th century, as well as one of the forefathers of surrealism. He is credited with coining the word “surrealism”. Two years after being wounded in World War I, he died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 at age 38.
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki was born in Rome, Italy and 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 noblewoman born near Navahrudak,Grodno Governorate (present-day Belarus). His maternal grandfather was a general in the Russian Imperial Army, killed in the Crimean War.
Apollinaire eventually moved from Rome to Paris and became one of the most popular members of the artistic community of Paris (both in Montmartre and Montparnasse). His friends and collaborators in that period included Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Max Jacob, André Salmon, André Breton, André Derain, Faik Konica,Blaise Cendrars, 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.
In 1911, he joined the Puteaux Group, a branch of the cubist movement. On 7 September 1911, police arrested and jailed him 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. These thefts were committed by Vincenzo Peruggia, born in Italy, to whom Apollinaire gave shelter, and Apollinaire voluntarily surrendered a number of stolen statuettes left behind by him. Apollinaire implicated his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of Mona Lisa, but he was also exonerated. He once called for the Louvre to be burnt down. Apollinaire was active as a journalist and art critic for Matin, Intransigeant, and Paris Journal. On 7 September 1911, police arrested and jailed him 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. These thefts were committed by Vincenzo Peruggia, born in Italy, to whom Apollinaire gave shelter, and Apollinaire voluntarily surrendered a number of stolen statuettes left behind by him. Apollinaire implicated his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of Mona Lisa, but he was also exonerated. He once called for the Louvre to be burnt down. Apollinaire was active as a journalist and art critic for Matin,Intransigeant, and Paris Journal.
He fought 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’s 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 andSurrealist 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 of influenza during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. He was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
Shortly after his death, Mercure de France published Calligrammes, a collection of his concrete poetry (poetry in which typography and layout adds to the overall effect), and more orthodox, though still modernist poems informed by Apollinaire’s experiences in the First World War and in which he often used the technique of automatic writing.
Source : Wikipedia 2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Apollinaire
