Portrait de Pierre Reverdy

Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960) arrived in Paris in 1910, taking various odd jobs to earn a living in the capital city. By 1912, he was working as a typesetting proof-reader for Birault Printing Press in Montmartre, which would eventually publish the poet's early works. In 1916 Birault Press printed and distributed Reverdy's first poetry compilation, La lucarne ovale, which would later be recognized by the Surrealists as groundbreaking and influential to their own work. With his creation of Nord-Sud in 1917, an avant-garde literary review, Reverdy established himself as one of the founders of Cubist literature.

Working with Tériade on a number of projects, including his most celebrated cycle of poems, Le chant des morts with illustrations by Pablo Picasso (1948) and Au soleil du plafond, illustrated by Juan Gris (1955), Reverdy went on to publish countless works, many of which were illustrated by Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall and Georges Braque to cite a few. Noted for his discourse on the pain and emptiness of the human experience, Reverdy's lyrics were groundbreaking with their lack of punctuation and use of indentations and irregular rhymes to provide structure.