Salmon, André

Salmon, André (1881–1969). French writer—a poet, novelist, art critic, biographer, and memoirist. He was born in Paris, the son of an engraver, and grew up in St Petersburg, where his father had found work. After returning to France to do military service he settled on a literary career in Paris, seeing himself mainly as a poet, but writing art criticism to earn a living. In 1904 he met Picasso, and along with two other noted writers—Apollinaire and Max Jacob—became one of his intimate circle of friends. John Richardson writes, ‘When he met Picasso, Salmon was the epitome of a romantic young poet: tall, lantern-jawed, saturnine … By all accounts he was a charming man, loved and admired by Picasso … Apollinaire thought very highly of Salmon and collaborated with him on three plays, none of which ever came to anything. Too much of his brilliance evaporated in talk’ (A Life of Picasso, vol. 1, 1991). Salmon was a progressive and prolific but not particularly distinguished critic. In addition to Picasso and the Cubists, he wrote about Modigliani, helping to establish his reputation and legend, and Rousseau. In 1920 he published La Négresse du Sacré Coeur—a roman à clef about the artists and writers he had known in the Bateau-Lavoir, with Picasso thinly disguised as a painter called Sorgue. He also describes this world in the first volume of his memoirs, Souvenirs sans fin: Première époque (1903–1908) (1955; two more volumes followed, 1956 and 1961), a book that is evocative but not always trustworthy. John Richardson describes it as ‘garrulous, self-promoting, diffuse. For all that he was in at the birth of the Rose period, that he came up with the title of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, that he was one of the closest observers of cubism, he lets us down time and again by telling us everything except what we need to know. There is a reason for these omissions. During the Spanish Civil War Salmon sided with Franco; and during World War II he worked for a collaborationist newspaper. His memoirs—written between 1945 and 1955—have to be read in the light of his former friend's resentment and disapproval.’