Paul ELUARD.

Eluard was born in 1895 as Eugene Grindel. You can see why he changed his name. He, like a lot of artists of his generation, lost faith in the bourgeois values of society following World War I, and after a brief flirtation with Tzara and Dadaism, joined his lifelong pal André Breton in founding the Surrealist movement in the mid-1920s. He remained an active and brilliant lyrical poet right through to his death in the early ’50s.

His poems are driven by all-consuming love, endless fascinating desire, and the exploration of the subconscious, which the Surrealists (with some justification) always thought more interesting than our waking selves. The motto on his bookplates (drawn by Max Ernst, another friend) was: ‘aprés moi le sommeil’. This is perhaps our favourite motto ever. Eluard had a number of important female muses in his life, the first of whom was Gala, who he met when he was very young in a sanatorium in Switzerland. They married, and after a stormy relationship which included a ménage-a-trois with Ernst (Ernst saw Gala as the archetypal Surrealist woman: see his painting ‘au réunion des amis’ - she’s the only girl), they divorced; Gala went on to marry Salvador Dali, who had something of an obsession with her.

Eluard next married Maria Benz, better known as Nusch. She inspired portraits by Picasso (with whom she had an affair) and Man Ray, who produced some stunning photographs of her for the book ‘facile’. Eluard is an important French poet. His work is tender and longing, with a slightly bitter heart that is too true to life.

He was respected as a member of the Resistance during the German occupation of France, and was one of the only Surrealists to stay in France during the War (mostly they took shelter in America). His poem ‘Liberté’, published in 1942, was - and remains - a famous text of the resistance movement.