Cleveland Museum of Art

Night Café

Louis Marcoussis

Date

c. 1923

Medium

oil on canvas

Culture

France, 20th century

Department

Modern European Painting and Sculpture

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Following Cubist principles, this painting depicts a table from multiple perspectives, providing different views of various objects simultaneously. Louis Casimir Ladislas Markus was born in Warsaw, Poland, into a Jewish family that had converted to Catholicism. In 1903, he moved to Paris where he met poet Guillaume Apollinaire and artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. He then began experimenting with Cubism. Also of Polish descent, Apollinaire had changed his own name and urged the artist to change his name to Marcoussis after a French village. The yellow hot air balloon and the French flag glimpsed out of the window pay homage to the artist’s adopted homeland. The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire urged the artist to change his name to Marcoussis, after a French village south of Paris. The artist was born Louis Casimir Ladislas Markus in Warsaw, Poland, and moved to Paris in 1903.

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