LES ROSES
de Guillaume Apollinaire

Galerie Boquet, in collaboration with Ambroise Audoin-Rouzeau, presents an exhibition dedicated to Guillaume Apollinaire, a central figure of the early 20th-century avant-garde.

Art critic, theorist, confidant to artists, and a draftsman himself, Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) stood at the heart of the aesthetic revolution that shaped modern art.

His writings and reviews provided fertile ground for the artists of his time. Championing simultaneity and the Esprit nouveau, he defended then-overlooked artists such as Henri Rousseau. Close to Picasso, an admirer of Braque and Matisse, and the lover of Marie Laurencin, he was among the earliest theorists of Cubism, coined the term Orphism, and actively promoted non-Western art. It was also Apollinaire who gave young poets the term “Surrealism” in 1924.

In his June 1913 manifesto, L’Antitradition futuriste, Apollinaire awarded a symbolic “Rose” to the leading voices of the avant-garde. Ten years after the Musée de l’Orangerie retrospective, Les Roses de Guillaume Apollinaire celebrates this artistic circle.

Accompanied by an essay by biographer Laurence Campa, the exhibition features rare embroideries by Marie Laurencin, originally owned by the poet; an original drawing and prints from Apollinaire’s personal collection; paintings by Alfred Jarry, Auguste Herbin, Félix Del Marle, and Jean Metzinger; drawings by Pablo Picasso, Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini; as well as an object by Marcel Duchamp.

Reflecting the gallery’s focus on historical research, the selection brings together key figures of modernism and overlooked artists, capturing the critical vitality that defined Apollinaire’s work.