Christian Zervos ( el, Χρήστος Ζερβός;

Argostoli Argostoli ( el, Αργοστόλι, Katharevousa: Ἀργοστόλιον) is a town and a municipality on the island of Kefalonia, Ionian Islands, Greece. Since the 2019 local government reform it is one of the three municipalities on the islan ...

, Cefalonia,

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

, January 1, 1889 – September 12, 1970,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

-French art historian, critic, collector, writer and publisher. Better known as an art critic in his own right, Zervos founded the magazine ''

Cahiers d'art ''Cahiers d'Art'' is a French artistic and literary journal founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos. ''Cahiers d'Art'' is also an eponymous publishing house which has published many monographs on artists living in France in the first half of the twent ...

'' (1926–1960) in Paris, and ran an art gallery. He was a connoisseur of modern painting in his time, and of

Greek art Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan civilization, and gave birth to Western classical art in the subsequent Geometric, Archaic and Classical periods (with further developments during the Hellenistic Period). It absorbed influences of E ...

and

prehistoric art In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of rec ...

. He published several books, of which the most important are: ''The Art of Crete'', ''The Art of the Cyclades'', ''L'art de l'époque du Renne en France'', and a

catalogue raisonné A ''catalogue raisonné'' (or critical catalogue) is a comprehensive, annotated listing of all the known artworks by an artist either in a particular medium or all media. The works are described in such a way that they may be reliably identified ...

of the work of

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

. M. Christian Durquet, Conservator of Patrimony at the Musée de l'Art Contemporain, ordered the establishment of a Zervos Museum at

Vézelay Vézelay () is a commune in the department of Yonne in the north-central French region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. It is a defensible hill town famous for Vézelay Abbey. The town and its 11th-century Romanesque Basilica of St Magdalene are de ...

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...

once credited him with being the 'most mediocre person that ever existed.'

Publications

* *Raoul Dufy, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1928 * Catalogue raisonné des œuvres de Pablo Picasso, éditions Cahiers d'art, Paris, 1932-1978 * Art de la Mésopotamie, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1935 * Matthias Grünewald : le retable d'Isenheim, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1936 * Art de la Catalogne, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1937 * Histoire de l'art contemporain, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1938 * Dessins de Picasso, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1949 * Fernand Léger : œuvres de 1905 à 1952, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1952 * Civilisation de la Sardaigne : néolithique au nouragique, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1954 * L'art des Cyclades, du début à la fin de l'âge du bronze, 2500-1100 avant notre ère, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1957 * Corpora, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1957 * Chauvin, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1960 * Brâncuși, éditions Cahiers d'art, 1957

Bibliography

- ''Index général de la revue Cahiers d'art, 1926-1960'', pref. Dora Vallier, Paris, Ed. Cahiers d'art, 1981. - Chara Kolokytha, ''Formalism and Ideology in 20th century Art: Cahiers d'Art, magazine, gallery, publishing house (1926-1960)'', PhD thesis, Northumbria University, 2016. - Chara Kolokytha, 'The Art Press and Visual Culture in Paris during the Great Depression: Cahiers d'Art, Minotaure and Verve' in: ''Visual Resources, An International Journal of Documentation'' 3, vol.29, Sept. 2013, pp. 184–215. - Chara Kolokytha
'Christian Zervos et Cahiers d'art, Archives de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky'
in ''Konsthistorisk Tidskrift'' 4, vol. 82, 2013, pp. 339–342. Polina Kosmadaki (ed.), - "Christian Zervos & Cahiers d’art: the archaic turn", exhibition catalogue, Benaki Museum, Athens, 2019. 327 p. with texts by P. Kosmadaki, Alexandre Farnoux, Panayotis Tournikiotis, Eleni Stavroulaki, Christian Derouet. - Jean-Pierre De Rycke, "Christian Zervos et Tériade: deux insulaires grecs à la conquête de l'avant-garde européenne", ''Paris - Athènes, 1863 - 1940'', Pinacothèque Nationale et Musée Alexandros Soutzos. Athènes, 2006. - Kim Grant, "Cahiers d'Art and the Evolution of Modernist Painting", ''The

Journal of Modern Periodical Studies ''Journal of Modern Periodical Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of modern periodicals published between 1880 and 1950 in the English-speaking world. The journal was established in 2010 and is published twice a year b ...

'', v. 1, n. 2, 2010, pp. 216–227. - ''Cahiers d'art, Musée Zervos à Vézelay'', sous la direction de Christian Derouet, Paris, Hazan, Perrigny, Conseil général de l'Yonne, DL 2006. -Christopher Green, "Zervos, Picasso and Brassaï, ethnographers in the field: a critical collaboration", in Malcolm Gee (ed.) ''Art criticism since 1900'', Manchester University Press, 1993. - Valery Dupont, ''Le discours anthropologique dans l'art des années 1920-1930 en France, à travers l'exemple des Cahiers d'art'', thèse, 1999, Art et Archéologie, Université de Dijon.

References

External links

* http://www.fondationzervos.com (French) * http://www.musee-zervos.fr * https://www.benaki.org/index.php?option=com_events&view=event&type=&id=5976&lang=en {{DEFAULTSORT:Zervos, Christian 1889 births 1970 deaths French book publishers (people) French art critics Greek emigrants to France Greek art collectors People from Argostoli French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French male writers