Guillaume Apollinaire author, art critic, poet, essayist and friend of Picasso had employed the Belgian Honoré Joseph Géry-Piéret as his secretary. Géry-Piéret was a colourful and likeable character with a taste for theft.
It was he who, as he was leaving for a stroll around Paris, put his head back around the door and is said to have asked Apollinaire’s companion Marie Laurencin if she “needed anything from the Louvre”. Whilst Marie said no others said yes.
Security at the Louvre, in those days, was not what it is now and Géry-Piéret was able to pick up and conceal two sculpted primitive Iberian heads. Whether by luck or design, by 1907, the heads had found their way to the Bateau Lavoir and Picasso’s studio.
These heads and their rough, blocky, time damaged appearance were to fundamentally change the course of art history. Their brute force and presence helped Picasso believe in the Demoiselles d’Avignon project.
