Guillaume Apollinaire

About Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire, born Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinaris Kostrowicki, was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent. Born in Rome in 1880, he grew up to become one of the most important literary figures of the early twentieth century and a passionate champion of avant-garde movements. Apollinaire gained international renown as a groundbreaking poet through his innovative techniques, notably eliminating all punctuation from his celebrated 1913 collection Alcools. He also pioneered graphic poetry in Calligrammes, published in 1918, in which words are arranged visually to create thematic designs. As an influential art critic, he actively defended Cubist painters and coined the term surrealism in 1917. Apollinaire served in the French army during World War I and suffered a critical head wound in 1916. Weakened by his injuries, he died during the Spanish flu pandemic in Paris in November 1918 at age thirty-eight.

Based on publicly available information.