NEW YORK, NY.- Za Mir Press announced the first book dedicated exclusively to the 64 years of friendship between the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and the French poet André Salmon, a member of Picasso’s Gang (la bande à Picasso), along with poets Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. Salmon expert Jacqueline Gojard, Professor of Literature, University of Paris III (Sorbonne nouvelle), explains their encoded humor and affection which nurtured their mutual understanding and aesthetic goals. Art historian Beth S. Gersh-Nešić translated Professor Gojard's essay from French to English. Both Salmon scholars created the first chronology of the Picasso-Salmon relationship for this publication.

André Salmon is best known for the “Anecdotal History of Cubism,” in his book La Jeune Peinture française (Young French Painting), published in 1912. This chapter on Cubism was a beginner’s guide to a radically innovative movement which revolutionized art during the early 20th century. Salmon was one of the primary champions and interpreters of Cubism. Moreover, he was the only critic to identify Picasso’s masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) as a cornerstone for the movement, give it its present title and then take it out of Picasso’s studio for its first public exhibition in the group show L’Art Moderne en France (July 1916 during World War I).

In Pablo Picasso and André Salmon: The Painter, the Poet and the Portraits, Jacqueline Gojard deconstructs Picasso’s numerous sketches of Salmon’s body, drawn from 1905 through 1907 and 1968, shortly before Salmon’s death in March 1969. These portraits testify to the Spanish artist’s experimental deformation of the human form while working on the Demoiselles d’Avignon. Salmon responded with his own caricatures of Picasso (1907-8), his references to the artist in his poetry, and his own form of disjointed imagery, similar in character to Synthetic Cubist collage. Gojard’s book helps us understand the coded language that Picasso and Salmon shared.

The Author
Jacqueline Gojard, Maître de conférences hors classe, Université de Paris, Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, has published numerous books and essays on Salmon, Apollinaire and other 20th-century French writers. She has also edited Salmon’s novels, memoirs and chronicles, a bibliography of his work and his correspondence with Max Jacob (Gallimard, 2009), and with Guillaume Apollinaire (Claire Paulhan, 2019).

The Translator and Editor
Beth Gersh-Nešić has edited and translated André Salmon on French Modern Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and published a book and essays on Salmon’s contributions to Cubism. She is the Director of New York Arts Exchange.

Gojard and Gersh-Nešić published the English translation of Salmon’s chapter “From Plaisance to Opéra,” from his Montmartre memoir L’Air de la Butte (1945), in ATA Source: The Online Publication of the Literary Division (No. 52, Spring 2011).

Jacqueline Gojard, Pablo Picasso and André Salmon: The Painter, the Poet and the Portraits, bi-lingual edition, text in French and in English, translated by Beth Gersh-Nešić. Chronology, Bibliography, Index, 21 illustrations,78 pp. New York, Za Mir Press, 2019. ISBN 9781950191017. $15.00; £12.00; 15.00 Euros. Available on Amazon.