Christian Zervos. French art collector, writer and publisher.

Better known as a publisher of books than as an art critic in his own right, Zervos founded the magazine Cahiers d'art

Cahiers d'art

Cahiers d'Art was a French artistic and literary magazine founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos. Zervos published it until 1960. Cahiers d'Art has also become an eponymous publishing house which published many monographs on French artists living in France in the first half of the twentieth century...

 (1926 – 1960) in Paris, and ran an art gallery.

He was a connoisseur of modern painting in his time, and of Greek art

Greek art

Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan prehistorical civilization, and gave birth to Western classical art in the ancient period...

 and prehistoric art

Prehistoric art

In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of record-keeping, or it makes significant contact with another...

. He published several books, of which the most important are: The Art of Crete, The Art of the Cyclades, L'art de l'époque du Renne en France, and a catalogue raisonnee of the work of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

.

M. Christian Durquet, Conservator of Patrimony at the Musée de l'Art Contemporain, ordered the establishment of a Zervos Museum at Vézelay

Vézelay

Vézelay is a commune in the Yonne department in Burgundy in north-central France. It is a defendable hill town famous for Vézelay Abbey. The town and the Basilica of St Magdelene are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites....

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External links

• http://www.fondationzervos.com (French)
• http://www.musee-zervos.fr