Pierre Reverdy

Pierre Reverdy (1889–1960) was a reclusive, yet integral component of the Parisian avant-garde in the early twentieth century: a friend to painters such as Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and Juan Gris, and to fellow poets such as Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob, Reverdy quickly came to represent a faction known as the “Cubist poets.” He was to have an influence as a poet and as the editor of the landmark WWI literary journal, Nord–Sud, and on other avant-garde movements, particularly Surrealism, whose leader, André Breton, revered Reverdy (in whose work he claimed “the modern mystery is briefly concentrated”). In 1926, Reverdy withdrew from the literary life of Paris for a life of seclusion in the village of Solesmes in the northwest of France.