Jean Cocteau – Un Skieur (The Skier)

Description

Jean Cocteau, Un Skieur (The Skier) is an original Cocteau drawing in pastel on paper made in 1959.  It is signed in the bottom center.

When Cocteau was eighteen years old, his poems were publicly read in Paris by the actor Edouard de Max and several of his theatre friends. Enamored with the young poet’s work, the actors presented a reading at a theatre on the Champs-Elysees. Following this introduction, Cocteau became an active participant in the Paris arts scene. In the period before World War I, he was associated with the avant-garde Cubists, Fauvists and Futurists. Cocteau met and worked with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Erik Satie, published several volumes of poems, began writing plays and ballets, and established himself as a leading member of the French avant-garde. Always a poet first and foremost, Cocteau emphasized from the beginning of his career that, whatever the genre in which he worked, all of his creations were essentially poetry.