Night Café (c. 1923): Art, History and Details

Night Café (c. 1923) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis Marcoussis (French, 1883–1941).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Night Café
• Date: c. 1923
• Creator attribution: Louis Marcoussis (French, 1883–1941)
• Culture: France, 20th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 87.3 x 105.7 x 7 cm (34 3/8 x 41 5/8 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 70.5 x 88.1 cm (27 3/4 x 34 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2006.139

A detail from the museum

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.

Collection credit

Given in loving memory of W. Chave and Mary Tyler McCracken by their daughters

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.