MARCOUSSIS (originally Marcous), LOUIS

MARCOUSSIS (originally Marcous), LOUIS (1883–1941), French painter. Marcoussis was born in Warsaw. As a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow he was one of the avant-garde Young Poland group which was strongly inclined to French culture. In 1903 he moved to Paris to study. When his father was no longer able to support him, he lived by contributing frivolous drawings to La Vie Parisienne and L'Assiette au Beurre. Marcoussis visited the United States in 1934 and his engravings were shown in New York and Chicago. When the Germans occupied Paris in 1940 Marcoussis and his wife happened to be staying in a village in central France where he was able to live in safety until his death the following   year. Marcoussis is listed generally among the cubists. Yet in his early still lifes, the element of fantasy is stronger than the purely analytical one. He was an excellent print-maker, who made illustrations for books by Gérard de Nerval, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Tristan Tzara. In his portraits, he abandoned cubism for a tight classical style. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Lafranchis (ed.), Marcoussis (Fr., 1961). (Alfred Werner)