Guillaume Apollinaire was a tireless champion of art nègre before it became fashionable. In writings in literary magazines and mainstream newspapers, he persistently argued that the creators of African art were artists and that their work deserved to be regarded as art and not as ethnographic material and curiosities. Apollinaire was a publisher and a poet, not a theoretician. He followed with great interest what was happening in the Musée du Trocadéro and was outspoken in advocating reform. Together with his friend Paul Guillaume, a Parisian art dealer, he continued this advocacy up to his death in 1918.
