Alexandre Mercereau [SEP] native language
Alexandre Mercereau
Alexandre Mercereau (Paris, 22 October 1884 – 1945) was a French symbolist poet and critic associated with Unanimism and the Abbaye de Créteil. He founded the Villa Médicis Libre, which helped impoverished artists and operated as charitable reformatory for delinquent teenagers. Mercereau's work inspired the revolutionary artistic movement of the early 20th century known as Cubism.
Early life and career.
Born Alexandre Mercereau de la Chaume, he signed his first texts Eshmer-Valdor, a pseudonym he quickly abandoned. In 1901, at
a friend of Maurice Denis and Les Nabis, he was painting rocks and seascapes in a progressively geometric fashion. He exhibited his seascapes at the 1909 Salon des Indépendants but Gleizes had not yet exhibited in that salon and appears not to have seen the work until they met through Alexandre Mercereau the same year. Mercereau, perhaps, realized the extent of their common interests.
According to Gleizes, Mercereau is also responsible for having introduced him to Jean Metzinger in 1910—the same year that Mercereau included these three artists in a Moscow exhibition