Esprit Jouffret

Who is Esprit Jouffret?

Esprit Jouffret was a French artillery officer, insurance actuary and mathematician, author of Traité élémentaire de géométrie à quatre dimensions, a popularization of Henri Poincaré's Science and Hypothesis in which Jouffret described hypercubes and other complex polyhedra in four dimensions and projected them onto the two-dimensional page.

Maurice Princet brought Traite to Picasso's attention. Picasso's sketchbooks for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon illustrate Jouffret's influence on the artist's work.