Christian Zervos met and married Yvonne Marion in 1932. The same year, Yvonne Zervos presented a selection of Mondrian’s works in the premises of Cahiers d’Art. The gallery firmly established itself in 1934 with exhibitions of Miro, Kandinsky, Ernst, Arp, Hélion, Giacometti. The Zervoses stopped their activities during the war and only resumed after the Liberation of Paris. They even publish an important Cahiers d’Art issue in 1945, just after the war. In 1947, the Zervoses, together with the poet René Char, organized an exhibition of contemporary paintings and sculptures for the first Festival d’Avignon, an event that became a permanent fixture in European cultural life.
After the war, the revue Cahiers d’Art became a single annual issue and ceased publication in 1960. Until 1970, Zervos published series of books by various authors, devoted to Léger, Brancusi, Villon and a concurrent series of archaeological works such as Art in Greece from the 3rd millennium to the 4th century BC, The Art of the Cyclades from the beginning to the end of the Bronze Age, Hellenic Civilization from the 11th to the 8th century… Zervos was never interested in classical art : his goal was to grasp art at its birth)
Yvonne Zervos died in January 1970, as she was preparing for the great Picasso exhibition in Avignon. Christian Zervos wrote a preface to it, a last hymn to the glory of the artist he had accompanied for more than forty years. Zervos continuously advocated for Picasso, insuring his ongoing reputation with multiple articles, special issues and exhibitions. Christian Zervos died in his turn in September 1970 after bequeathing all his possessions to the commune of Vézelay. In 1978, under the supervision of Mila Gagarine, the thirty-three volume Picasso catalogue was finally completed.
