Marius de Zayas, introducer of Picasso in the United States.
The artist, writer, and gallery owner Marius de Zayas Enriquez y Calmet was born in 1880 in Veracruz, Mexico, to a wealthy family. His father, the journalist and writer Rafael de Zayas, was also a renowned lawyer. In 1906, the family left Mexico for political reasons and settled in New York.
After arriving in New York, de Zayas began drawing caricatures for the New York Evening World and met Alfred Stieglitz, who, together with Edward Steichen, co-founded an art gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue. Stieglitz showed de Zayas’ work at the gallery in January 1909, and again a year later, with 100 free-standing cardboard cutout figures portraying New York characters strolling along Fifth Avenue in front of the Plaza Hotel.
In October 1910, de Zayas arrived in Paris, where he stayed for almost a year scouting out artists for Stieglitz. Three months later, an article based on his conversations with Picasso was published[1] in the Spanish-language magazine America. In March 1911, de Zayas –jointly with photographer Edward Steichen and painter Frank Haviland– selected 83 drawings and watercolors by Picasso to be shown at “291” gallery, bringing Cubism to North America. In the catalogue, de Zayas pointed out that “Picasso does not preoccupy himself in the least with public opinion. Like every true artist, he thinks and creates first for himself, to correspond to his intimate desires, to satisfy an inherent need of his spirit. If the majority of the public pretends not to understand his paintings, it must be because that majority does not see in art more than it has been taught to see.”[2]
In 1911, back in New York, encouraged by his experiences in Paris, de Zayas explored a new, more abstract caricature style, which he presented at “291” gallery in April-May 1913. Jointly with Paul Haviland, he published A Study of the Modern Evolution of Plastic Expression, one of the first essays to address the questions of modern art.
In the spring of 1914, de Zayas returned to Paris, reconnected with Francis Picabia, and published his caricatures in Les Soirées de Paris, the short-lived journal founded by Guillaume Apollinaire (July-August 1914). It was in Paris that de Zayas discovered African art and its influence on the development of modern art, and he proposed an exhibition to Stieglitz. In June 1914, Statuary in Wood by African Savages – The Root of Modern Art opened at “291”. In another exhibition, held in late 1914, pieces by Picasso and Braque were placed opposite Kota reliquary figures from Gabon.
De Zayas returned to New York at the outbreak of the First World World and encouraged Stieglitz to publish a new magazine, titled 291 like his gallery, of which ten issues appeared. Picasso was symbolized in one of the last issues in 1915 by a bull's horn and a rose, perhaps a reference to the period with the same name or as a classic allegory of beauty.
Beginning in 1915 and for three years, de Zayas ran the Modern Gallery on Fifth Avenue and showed works by Picasso, Picabia, Braque, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Brancusi, and Rivera. He finally opened a gallery of his own in October 1919, which barely lasted a year and a half. In 1921, he went back to Europe, where he organized exhibitions and added to his collection (Picasso's Woman with a Book, 1909, purchased from Ambroise Vollard in 1924 and currently in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum in New York). De Zayas was in contact with Picasso and continued to write for American newspapers. An article about Picasso published in 1923[3] included the following quote, repeated so many times thereafter that it has come to seem almost apocryphal: “In my opinion, to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing” (simplified as the famous “I don’t' search, I find.”). And Picasso added: “In art, intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by facts and not by reasons. What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing. We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
Marius de Zayas returned to the United States after the Second World War. He died in[1] Marius de Zayas, “Pablo Picasso”, América, n°V, vol. VII, May 1911. Published in Writings of Marius de Zayas, Mexico, Estancia FEMSA-Casa Luis Barragán, 2018, pp. 142-147. His father was the director of América magazine.
[2] Marius de Zayas, How, When, and Why Modern Art Came to New York, edited by Francis M. Naumann, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1996, p. 221. This chronicle, written in the 1940s, was not published during his lifetime.
[3] “Picasso Speaks”, The Arts, New York, May 1923, pp. 315-326, quoted in Alfred Barr Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1946, pp. 270-271. This text, not originally signed by de Zayas, is generally attributed to him.
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