Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler: dealer and publisher

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was one of the most important art dealers of the 20th century. His name has forever been linked to the history of cubism. He was the first promoter, since from 1908 he presented Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger in his Parisian gallery. He was also the best witness, the first historian and the first publisher. Kahnweiler suffered harshly the attacks of history, which in 1914 deprived this German pacifist and Jewish art dealer of his collection and in 1940 stripped him of all his property. He would remain faithful throughout his life to an intellectual and moral ethic that gave a particular tone to the exchanges he had with his artists. A man of convictions and with a deep sense of duty, he was the protector and collector of all the artists he presented in the three galleries he successively managed, the one bearing his name, the Galerie Simon and the Galerie Louise Leiris. Rejecting any unitary line, but hostile to abstraction, he considered painting as an intelligible writing of the world, animated by a poetic feeling. Kahnweiler, indifferent to the fashions and dogmas of his time, placed Picasso, "the shock of his life", at the top of everything.