I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.

Apollinaire was active as a journalist and art critic for Matin Intransigeant and Paris Journal. His maternal grandfather was a general in the Russian Imperial Army killed in the Crimean War. In an open-handed preface to the catalogue of the Brussels Indépendants show Apollinaire stated that these 'new painters' accepted the name of Cubists which has been given to them.

Guillaume Apollinaire (French pronunciation: ​[ɡijom apɔliˈnɛʁ]; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet playwright short story writer novelist and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother. Among the foremost poets of the early 20th century he is credited with coining the word Surrealism and writing one of the earliest works described as surrealist the play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917 used as the basis for a 1947 opera). Two years after being wounded in World War I he died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 at age 38.