The journal, founded by the art critic Christian Zervos in Paris at 14, rue du Dragon in 1926, was published with an interruption from 1941 to 1943, until 1960. The first post-war issue was dated 1940-1944 and focused on poets and writers from the Resistance, including Vercors. Cahiers d'Art also published selections from poet Paul Éluard's Open Book I (1940) and Open Book II (1942).
After World War II, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan was invited by Zervos to publish two articles on logic: Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty (1945) and The Number Thirteen and the Logical Form of Suspicion (1946). Samuel Beckett also contributed one of his earliest texts in French,The Painting of Van de Velde or the World and the Pants.
The journal has been noted for the quality of its articles and illustrations which promoted Modern Art in France for over thirty years.[4] Artists represented include Picasso, Matisse, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst, Raoul Dufy, Marc Chagall, Brâncuși, Van Gogh, Paul Klee, Henry Laurens, Moholy-Nagy, Jean Lurçat, Joan Miró, Calder, Victor Brauner, De Chirico, Wolfgang Paalen, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray.
Swedish collector Staffan Ahrenberg purchased the publication and relaunched it in October 2012.