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03 November, 2017

Jean-Paul Clébert



 Jean-Paul Clébert was a French writer.


Before completing his studies in a Jesuit college, Jean-Paul Clébert left to join the French Resistance in 1943 at the age of 16. After the liberation, he spent six months in Asia and then returned to France. He described his unusual life as follows:

My secondary education was interrupted by the war but continued as a prisoner. I have never had a regular job but have been successively a house painter, cook, newspaper seller, farm worker, navvy undertaker’s mute, valet, cafe proprietor and tramp. Lived for some years with gipsies and am now engaged on writing a book about them. Have also traveled widely in the East. I now live alone on a farm in Haute Provence.

On returning he lived for 3 or 4 years as a clochard amongst the many homeless people in the underground world of Paris. This experience inspired his classic study of the underworld of Paris Paris insolite/Unknown Paris (1952), which he dedicated to his companions Robert Giraud and photographer Robert Doisneau. The book was championed by the remaining Surrealists, and the emerging Situationists based their theory of the dérive on Clébert's principles, using his book as a literal guide to the underside of the city. An illustrated edition with photos of Patrice Molinard (who debuted as a stills photographer on Georges Franju's documentary le Sang des bêtes) and layout by Massin was published in 1954.

Clébert’s friends Jacques Yonnet and Robert Giraud were inspired to write their own tales of the vagabond life on the streets of Paris; Yonnet’s Rue des Maléfices (1954), his sole novel (originally Enchantements sur Paris, English translation Paris Noir), and Giraud’s Le Vin des rues (1955). The three frequented Chez Fraysse on Rue de Seine in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with Doisneau, not far from Clébert’s other haunt Chez Moineau, the dirt-cheap refuge of bohemian youths and of Guy Debord, Michele Bernstein, Gil J. Wolman, Ivan Chtcheglov and the other members of the Lettrist International, and which was the subject of Ed van der Elsken’s photo-romain Love on the Left Bank (1956). Thus did Clébert attend both the last Surrealist meeting and some of the first gatherings of the Situationists. For two years he was a reporter in Asia for Paris Match and France Soir.

Clébert retreated from urban life in 1956 to the mountainous Luberon region of Provence, in which he discovered abandoned stone villages, and took up residence there without running water or electricity, before moving in 1968 to Oppède-le-Vieux. The village had been a refuge for artists during the war, where Alexey Brodovitch owned an old mill occupied by his brother, and where Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, widow of the aviator, was still resident. He spent the rest of his life there, dying on September 20, 2011.

Jean Miot


Jean Miot was a French journalist and media executive. He was the associate director of Le Figaro, France's conservative newspaper of record, from 1980 to 1993, and the chairman of its advisory committee from 1993 to 1996. He was the CEO of Agence France-Presse from 1996 to 1999.

Jean Miot was born on July 30, 1939 in Châteauroux, Berry, France. Miot began his career at Centre Presse, a local newspaper in Poitiers in 1964. He was a journalist for France-Antilles in 1968-1970. Between 1974 and 1980, he was the editor-in-chief of France-Antilles, Paris Normandie, Le Berry Républicain, Nord Matin, and Nord éclair.

Miot was the associate director of Le Figaro from 1980 to 1993, and the chairman of its advisory committee of Le Figaro from 1993 to 1996. He was also the president of the National Federation of French Press from 1993 to 1996, and the chief executive officer of Agence France-Presse from 1996 to 1999.

Miot was a knight of the Legion of Honour and an officer of the Étoile Civique. He was also a knight of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Sacavin and a member of the Confrérie des maitres-pipiers.  Additionally, he was a commander of the Senegalese National Order of the Lion.

Miot died of a heart attack on April 18, 2017 at the age of 77.

Luis Trenker


Luis Trenker was a South Tyrolean film producer, director, writer, actor, architect, and alpinist.

Alois Franz Trenker was born on 4 October 1892 in Urtijëi, Tyrol in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father Jacob Trenker was a painter from North Tyrol, and his mother Karolina was from Urtijëi in Val Gardena. He grew up speaking two languages: German, the language of his father, and Ladin, the language of his mother. He attended the local primary school from 1898 to 1901, and then attended the Josefinum in Bolzano in 1902 and 1903. From 1903 to 1905, he attended the arts and crafts school in Bolzano, where he developed his skills as a woodcarver.

In 1912, he entered the Realschule in Innsbruck, where he studied Italian as a foreign language. There he began his middle school studies. During his high school years, he spent his holidays working for mountain guides and ski instructors. After his matriculation examinations in 1912, Trenker studied architecture at the Technical University in Vienna.

At the start of World War I, Trenker fought as a cadet in an Austro-Hungarian heavy artillery unit on the Eastern Front in Galicia and Russisch-Polen. From 1915 to 1918, he fought in the mountain war against Italy in the border fortress of Nauders. Later he fought in Trento. From 1916 he served as a mountain guide in the Dolomites. At the end of the war he had achieved the rank of Lieutenant. He would write 23 books based on his war experiences, the most important of which were Fort Rocca Alta and Berge in Flammen, the latter of which was made into the 1931 film Mountains on Fire.

At the end of the war, Trenker made several unsuccessful attempts to start an architecture business in Bolzano. In 1924, he enrolled at the Technical University of Graz, and then worked as an architect in Bolzano, forming a business partnership with the Austrian architect Clemens Holzmeister. In 1924, Trenker participated in the Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix as a member of the Italian five-man bobsled team. Under the leadership of Pilot Lodovico Obexer, they ended up in sixth place.

Trenker's first contact with film came in 1921, when he helped director Arnold Fanck on one of his mountain films. The main actor could not perform the stunts required, and so Trenker assumed the leading role. He gradually assumed more roles on the set, and by 1928 was directing, writing, and starring in his own films. By now he had abandoned his job as an architect to concentrate on his films.

In 1928 he married Hilda von Bleichert, the daughter of a fabrics manufacturer from Leipzig, and together they had four children. In 1932 Trenker created (with Curtis Bernhardt and Edwin H. Knopf) an historical film The Rebel. Trenker stated that the film's plotline of a Tyrolean mountaineer Severin Anderlan leading a revolt against occupying French forces in 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars. The greatest Tirolean patriot Andreas Hofer was a proto-type of "Severin Anderlan" ... Trenker was designed to mirror what was happening in contemporary Germany as it rejected the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

The main theme of Trenker's work was the idealization of people’s connection with their homeland and pointing out the decadence of city life (most clearly visible in his 1934 film Der verlorene Sohn (The Prodigal Son). This loosely played into the hands of Nazi propagandists, who seized upon the nationalistic elements of his work. However, Trenker refused to allow his work to be subverted as such and eventually moved to Rome in 1940 to avoid further governmental pressure. After a pair of documentary films, however, Trenker returned to Bolzano and stopped making films. The style he had developed in the thirties was not limited to nationalistic, folkloristic, and heroic clichés. His impersonation of a hungry, downtrodden immigrant in depression era New York was regarded as one of the seminal scenes for future Italian neorealism by the likes of Roberto Rossellini.

Trenker was accused of fascist opportunism after the war, but the charges were eventually dropped. In the 1950s, he returned to the movie industry, though by 1965 he was making primarily documentary films that focused on the Austrian province of Tyrol and South Tyrol (his homeland), which had become part of Italy. He also returned to writing about the mountains.

Luis Trenker died on 13 April 1990 in Bolzano at the age 97. He was buried in his family's plot at Urtijëi.

Frimann Falck Clausen



Frimann Falck Clausen was a Norwegian actor who might be remembered best from the role of lorries Wheel in the children's series Christmas in Skomakergata in 1979. He is also remembered from the role of the big brother Torsøien in the Norwegian film comedy Bør Børson Jr. from 1974. Clausen had assignments at several of the country's theaters, including The Norwegian Theater , Oslo New Theater and National Theater , plus he gave voice to Bror Tuck in the Norwegian version of the cartoon about Robin Hood.

Hans Holmen


Hans Holmen was a Norwegian painter and sculptor .

Hans Holmen graduated from Harriet Backer's Masters School in Kristiania from 1899 to 1900 and at the Zahrtmann's Masters School in Copenhagen the following two years. He debuted at Statens kunstutstilling 1902 with a painting from the riot. His motifs were found mostly in the forestry and agriculture of homesteads, and he eventually got a good name as a portrait painter.

A portraiture mission brought him to England and France, where he studied sculpture in the museums. He went more and more to this expression without losing the paint. After the First World War , he settled down in Sandefjord, where his sculpture by the priest and salmonist Magnus Brostrup Landstad took place in 1928. It was the first time a public statue was carved in Norwegian hard rock. Together with the " Myllarguten " ( 1940 ) on Nordagutu (more specifically at Nordagutu station ), Ulabrand Monument in Ula ( 1933)) and the bust of Harald Sohlberg on Røros, it is considered to be his main work. He has also formed memorials of the fallen 1940-1945 at Bommestad in Hedrum and in Stokke.

Peculiar are many of the graves, tombs and reliefs, nearly 60 in the century, like jewelry cemeteries in many parts of the country. Most are carved in stone, a few are made as bronze reliefs. A few wrought iron works are also available according to Holmen's drawings.

To his early production there are a number of illustrations to some of Lorens Berg's village books. Holmen also stood for the decoration in Kodal church, but these works have been removed by restoration of the church.

Holmen has also made the support of Lorens Berg at the Gallis water in Kodal .

Christ Daae Magelssen


Christ Daae Magelssen was a Norwegian sculptor .

Magelssen was son of parish priest in Åfjord Hans Gynter Magelssen (d. 1886) and Drude Cathrine Haar Daae (1815-88), a sister of Ludvig Kristensen Daa. As a young boy, he was first a sailor before he started making gallion figures in an English workshop. When he returned to Norway, he decided to become a sculptor, and went to Copenhagen in 1866 with a state grant. Here he was taught by the Danish sculptor Herman Wilhelm Bissen for three years. During this period, he performed his first major work, "Seaman, who sweeps his fathers' coast."

In the next few years, Magelssen lived in Kristiania before he went to Rome in 1871. Here he lived for ten years, initially with a state grant, and became acquainted with other Norwegians who were in Italy at the same time: Ole Bull, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Jonas Lie and Henrik Ibsen. During the Roman period, he made the colossal statue "Meleager", which was exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878. In the 1880s he returned to Norway, and lived first in Bergen then Kristiania.

Magelssen died at the age of 98. He was married to Italian letterpress daughter Adele Elvira Salandri (born 1857).

Sæbjørn Buttedahl


Sæbjørn Buttedahl was a Norwegian stage and film actor who later found prominence as a sculptor.

Nils Sæbjørn Buttedahl was born in Lier, Norway and began his career as a stage actor in 1896 at the age of twenty. From 1907 to 1924 he was engaged at the Centralteatret in Oslo. He appeared in a number of stage plays by Henrik Ibsen, and appeared onstage with such eminent Norwegian actors of the era as Agnes Mowinckel and Martin Linge.

Buttedahl appeared in three feature-length silent films during his career as an actor. Two of these films, 1926's Simen Mustrøens besynderlige opplevelser and 1927's Den glade enke i Trangvik were directed by Harry Ivarson. His final film role was in the 1927 romantic drama Fjeldeventyret, directed by his son-in-law Leif Sinding.

During his time as an actor, Buttedahl also began a career as a sculptor, mainly as a sculptor of busts and almost exclusively sculpted notable theater personalities. He debuted his work at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo in 1912. Notable works in the public collection include:

Sæbjørn Buttedahl married Danish stage actress Clare Petrea Margrethe "Maggie" Benelli (1870–1933). They had one daughter, Ellen (Buttedahl) Sinding (1899–1980), who would marry film director Leif Sinding and become a film actress and dancer.

In 1926, Buttedahl immigrated to the United States and settled in San Diego, California where he died in 1960.

Karl Bergmann


Karl Bergmann was a Norwegian actor, director and theater director who was at the National Scene for a number of years, including theater director.

Bergmann debuted in 1901 at The National Scene, where he was employed later, also as director - and from 1931-34 as chief. As an actor, his talent ranged from dramatic roles such as Rosmer in Rosmersholm and the title role of John Gabriel Borckman, to comedy trials such as Daniel Heire in Ibsen's Youth League, as well as Holberg figures such as Erasmus Montanus and Vielgeschrey in The Timeless. In Hans Wiers-Jenssen's Bergen comedy, Jan Herwitz, he played the central role of Böschen until his last year of life.

Karl Bergmann has had several songs by Holberg , both on the National Scene and as a guest at the National Theater. He was in 1921-24 the head of the Stavanger Theater.

Øystein Wingaard Wolf


Øystein Wingaard Wolf is a Norwegian poet and author, living and working in Oslo. Since his debut in 1980 (Morderleken), he has published numerous books of poetry, as well as three music albums. He was awarded the Mads Wiel Nygaard's Endowment in 1986.



Louis Hémon


Louis Hémon was a French writer best known for his novel Maria Chapdelaine.

Hémon was born in Brest, France. He was enrolled in the Montaigne and Louis-le-Grand secondary schools in Paris, where he resided with his family. A bilingual secretary in several maritime agencies, he collaborated, starting from 1904, in a Parisian sports journal. After his studies of law and oriental languages in the Sorbonne, he moved to London.

In 1911, he moved to Canada, settling initially in Montreal. Hémon wrote Maria Chapdelaine during his time working at a farm in the Lac Saint-Jean region.

Hémon died July 8, 1913 when he was struck by a train at Chapleau, Ontario. He never saw the widespread publication of his landmark novel.

02 November, 2017

Reiulf Steen


Reiulf Steen was a Norwegian politician for the Norwegian Labour Party. He was active in the Labour Party from 1958 to 1990, serving as deputy party chairman from 1965 to 1975 and chairman from 1975 to 1981.

Born in Hurum, Steen was elected leader of the regional Labour Party affiliate at age 14. He started out his professional career as a factory worker but soon took a job as a journalist in the newspaper Fremtiden, in Drammen. He rose quickly through the ranks of his party, chairing the Workers' Youth League from 1961 to 1964.

He later served as minister of transportation from 1971 to 1972 and minister of commerce and trade from 1979 to 1981. From 1977 to 1993 he was a member of Parliament, representing the constituencies Oslo and Akershus. He was the vice president of the Socialist International from 1978 to 1983 and chaired its committee on Chile from 1975 to 1990. He maintained a long-standing interest in Latin America and was appointed Norwegian ambassador to Chile in 1992, a tenure that lasted until 1996.

In later years, his memoirs and personal recollections affected public opinion.[citation needed] He related accounts of his own psychiatric problems, difficulties within the Labour Party, and other contemporary issues.[citation needed] He has also written columns for several of the country's leading newspapers, dealing with matters such as the EU, the war in Iraq, and the shift to the right of his party in recent years. He was also active in ATTAC and chaired the Norwegian branch of the European Movement (1999–2001), Norsk Folkehjelp (1999–2003) and the Norwegian branch of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights (1986–1992).

He died on 5 June 2014 and was survived by his wife, four children from a prior marriage and step-family.

Vittorio Giardino


Vittorio Giardino is an Italian comic artist.

Giardino was born in Bologna, where he graduated in electrical engineering in 1969. At the age of 30, he decided to leave his job and devote himself to comics. Two years later his first short story, "Pax Romana", was published in La Città Futura, a weekly magazine published by the Italian Communist Youth Federation and edited by Luigi Bernardi.

In 1982 Giardino created a new character: Max Fridman, an ex-secret agent involved in the political struggle in 1930s Europe. His first adventure, Hungarian Rhapsody was serialized in the first four issues of magazine Orient Express, bringing Giardino in the limelight of the international comic scene. Max Fridman adventures have been published in 18 countries. Some of the prizes the series won include Lucca Festival's Yellow Kid (de) and Brussels' St. Michel.

Starting in 1984, Giardino produced a number of short stories for the Italian magazine Comic Art, where he introduced Little Ego, a young and sexy girl inspired by Winsor McCay's Little Nemo who stars in one-page dreamy erotic stories.

In 1991 Giardino created a new character, Jonas Fink for the Il Grifo magazine. Jonas is a young Jew in 1950's Prague whose father is arrested by the communist police. He and his mother have to cope with the discrimination and oppression of the Stalinist regime. The book, collected as A Jew in Communist Prague, won the Angoulème Alfred prize for best foreign work in 1995 as well as a Harvey Award at San Diego in 1999.

Giardino detailed art style recalls the French ligne claire, while his writing owes to hard boiled and spy story authors like Dashiell Hammett and John le Carré.

Manuel Felguérez


Manuel Felguérez Barra is a prominent abstract artist of Mexico, part of the Generación de la Ruptura which broke with the muralist movement of Diego Rivera and others in the mid 20th century. Felguérez was born in Zacatecas in 1928, but political instability caused his family to lose their land there and move to Mexico City. In 1947, he had the chance to travel to Europe and impressed with the art there, decided to dedicate himself to the vocation. Unhappy with the education at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico, he did most of his studies in France, where he specialized in abstract art, something that was not accepted in Mexico at the time. His exhibitions were initially limited to galleries and the production of “sculpted murals” using materials such as scrap metals, stones and sand. As attitudes in Mexico changed towards art, Felguérez found acceptance for his work and remains active at over eighty years of age.

Miguel Utrillo


Miguel Utrillo i Morlius was an engineer, painter, decorator, critic and Spanish artistic promoter. He was one of the artistic directors of the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1929 , actively participating in the creation of the Spanish Village of Montjuïc . His name has been linked to those of Santiago Rusiñol, Ramón Casas, Suzanne Valadon and Catalan modernism. 

Ramon Casas


Ramon Casas i Carbó was a Catalan Spanish artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona, he was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, and beyond; he was also known for his paintings of crowd scenes ranging from the audience at a bullfight to the assembly for an execution to rioters in the Barcelona streets. Also a graphic designer, his posters and postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme.

Santiago Rusiñol


Santiago Rusiñol i Prats was a Spanish painter, poet, and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan modernisme movement.

He influenced Pablo Picasso as a modern artist, and also left a number of modernist buildings in Sitges, a town in Catalonia.

Wilhelm II


Wilhelm II, or William II was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was the eldest grandchild of the British Queen Victoria and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe.

Acceding to the throne in 1888, he dismissed the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1890 and launched Germany on a bellicose "New Course" in foreign affairs that culminated in his support for Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914 that led in a matter of days to the First World War. Bombastic and impetuous, he sometimes made tactless pronouncements on sensitive topics without consulting his ministers, culminating in a disastrous Daily Telegraph interview in 1908 that cost him most of his influence. His leading generals, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, dictated policy during the First World War with little regard for the civilian government. An ineffective war-time leader, he lost the support of the army, abdicated in November 1918, and fled to exile in the Netherlands.

Jean Xceron


Jean Xceron was an American abstract painter of Greek origin. He immigrated to the United States in 1904 and studied at the Corcoran School of Art. He worked at the Guggenheim Museum as a security guard for 28 years from 1939 to his death. He is described as a "pioneer of non-objective painting" by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. His works are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Ruskin Spear


Ruskin Spear was an English painter.

Born in Hammersmith, Spear attended the local art school before going on to the Royal College of Art in 1930. He began his teaching career at Croydon School of Art, going on to teach at the Royal College of Art from 1948 to 1975. Initially influenced by Walter Sickert and the Camden Town Group, and the portraiture of the Euston Road School, his work often has a narrative quality, with elements of humour and gentle satire.

Because he used a wheelchair due to childhood polio, much of his work focused on his immediate surroundings. He rendered the citizens of Hammersmith relaxing in and around the local pubs, theatres and shops. A retrospective of Spear's work was held at the Royal Academy in 1980. His work is represented in the Tate Gallery Collection.

A large number of Spear's paintings are held in important public collections, including the Government Art Collection, Arts Council England, National Portrait Gallery, Imperial War Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1979.

Luis Cernuda


Luis Cernuda was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. During the Spanish Civil War, in early 1938, he went to the UK to deliver some lectures and this became the start of an exile that lasted till the end of his life. He taught in the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge before moving in 1947 to the US. In the 1950s he moved to Mexico. While he continued to write poetry, he also published wide-ranging books of critical essays, covering French, English and German as well as Spanish literature. His collected poems were published under the title La realidad y el deseo.

Will Eisner


William Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor, and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.

Louis-Joseph Lebret


Louis-Joseph Lebret was a French Dominican social scientist and philosopher and pioneer of development ethics, who sought to "put the economy at the service of man" and advanced the notion of the "human economy."

Louis-Joseph Lebret was born June 26, 1897, in Minihic, Brittany, in a family of sailors, closely connected to the peasant farmers of the area. His father was a marine carpenter. He entered the Brest Naval School (“l’Ecole Navale de Brest”), became a marine officer, fought in World War I with the Lebanese squadron. and was briefly director of the port of Beirut. In 1922 he became an instructor at the Naval Academy. When his religious vocation became clearer, he left the marines in 1923 to become a Dominican priest and was ordained in 1928.

After completing his theological studies, he was assigned to Saint-Malo in 1929 where he observed the destitution of the fishermen and their families. He conducted in-depth surveys among the fishermen, regarding their problems and needs, in an effort to find solutions. For ten years he studied connections between unemployment, low wages, the poorly organized local fishing industry and the attempt on the part of international firms to monopolize the best fishing areas. Lebret determined that the vulnerability of the small scale local fishermen to the broader market had ingrained structural causes. He conducted over 400 studies on fishing conditions from areas as diverse as Britain, the Baltic and the Mediterranean. At the same time he established trade unions, co-ops, and maritime associations to re-configure the way business was done.

During World War II, he was drafted to protect French fishing and oversee merchant marine policy. In 1941 he founded in Marseille, with François Perroux, Henri Desroche and others Économie et Humanisme (Economy and Humanism), in the Lyons region, whose objective was to study economic systems and social change, proposing to “put back the economy at the service of man”. In 1942 the Revue Economie et Humanisme was created.

A lecture tip to Brazil in 1947 led Lebret to focus on development in the Third World. He worked in Brazil (1947-1954), Colombia (Lebret Mission 1955), Senegal (1958-1959), Lebanon (1960-1964), and other countries. Lebret believed that chronic structural evils cannot be corrected by subjective good will but by transformation of those structures, which presupposes a thorough understanding of how they work. He believed in the necessity of combining research and rigorous analysis with action. He was recognized by the United Nations as an expert on the question of living-standard disparities in the world.

In 1958 he founded the International Institute for Research and Training, Education and Development (IRFED), later called the International Center Development and Civilizations - Lebret - IRFED.

Lebret championed concern for development as a concern of the Catholic Church. He was aware of the challenges posed to the Church and the Western by underdevelopment and pushed the argument for an increased solidarity with poor countries. He was called upon by Pope Paul VI to participate as an expert in the Vatican Council and assisted in the drafting of Gaudium et spes. He was also asked to represent the Holy See at the first UNCTAD (United Nations Conference for Trade and Development) which took place in Geneva in 1965. Père Lebret was one of the experts consulted in the drafting of the 1967 encyclical Populorum progressio.

Lebret died on June 20, 1966.

Constant Puyo


Émile Joachim Constant Puyo was a French photographer, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the leading advocate of the Pictorialist movement in France, he championed the practice of photography as an artistic medium. For most of his career, Puyo was associated with the Photo Club of Paris, serving as its president from 1921 to 1926. His photographs appeared in numerous publications worldwide, and were exhibited at various expositions in the 1900s.

Victor-Lévy Beaulieu


Victor-Lévy Beaulieu is a French Canadian writer, playwright and editor.

Born in Saint-Paul-de-la-Croix, in the area of Bas-Saint-Laurent, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu began primary school at Trois-Pistoles, moving later to Montréal-Nord. He began his public writing career at the Montreal weekly Perspectives, where he served as chronicler for a decade (1966–1976). In 1967, he became a copy writer at La Presse, Petit Journal, Digest Éclair, and finally at Maintenant in 1970.

In 1967 he won the Larousse-Hachette Prize thanks to an eighteen-page essay devoted to Victor Hugo. In 1968, he spent a year in Paris, and on his return became a scriptwriter at the Montreal radio station CKLM while resuming his position of chronicler. Also in 1968, he published his first novel Mémoires d'outre-tonneau'. This would be the first of a long run: Race de monde (1969) — La nuite de Malcomm Hudd (1969) — Jos Connaissant (1970) — Les Grands Pères (1971) — Un rêve québécois (1972) — Oh Miami Miami Miami (1973) — Don Quichotte de la démanche (1974).

Beaulieu served as a teacher of literature at the National Theatre School of Canada from 1972 to 1978, and also wrote for the Radio-Canada broadcasts "Documents", "Petit théâtre", "Roman", "La Feuillaison". His recent book, James Joyce, l'Irlande et le Québec, has been praised by critics.

In 2008 he threatened to burn copies of his entire body of work as a protest against the growth of bilingualism in Quebec and various statements by PQ leader Pauline Marois in support of English classes for francophone schoolchildren. The writer created a stir after describing Canadian Governor-General Michaëlle Jean as a "negro queen" in L'Aut'Journal magazine. Beaulieu said Ms. Jean was appointed to the post because she was "black, young, pretty, ambitious, and because of her husband, certainly a nationalist as well." In an interview with La Presse, the author defended his text, saying he had not intended to be racist. However, his eight references to the "reine negre" caught the attention of Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe and Bloc MP Vivian Barbot. Ms. Barbot told La Presse she found the text insulting and discriminatory, as well as a personal attack on Ms. Jean's character.

Mr. Beaulieu wrote of the "small, black queen of Radio-Canada" and her visit to France, where she spoke about Canadian federalism, but also saluted France for its abolition of slavery in 1847. Mr. Beaulieu noted Ms. Jean, a native of Haiti, came from a country that long suffered the effects of slavery.

He also attacked writer Mordecai Richler for the unsympathetic portrayal of French Canadians in his novels.

Seán Ó Faoláin


Seán Proinsias Ó Faoláin was an Irish short story writer. He was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1986.

Ó Faoláin was born as John Francis Whelan in Cork City, County Cork, Ireland. He was educated at the Presentation Brothers Secondary School in Cork. He came under the influence of Daniel Corkery, joining the Cork Dramatic Society, and increasing his knowledge of the Irish language, which he had begun in school. Shortly after entering University College, Cork, he joined the Irish Volunteers. He fought in the War of Independence. During the Irish Civil War he served as Censor for the Cork Examiner and as publicity director for the IRA. After the Republican loss, he received M.A. degrees from the National University of Ireland and from Harvard University where he studied for 3 years. He was a Commonwealth Fellow from 1926 to 1928; and was a Harvard Fellow from 1928 to 1929.

He wrote his first stories in the 1920s, eventually completing 90 stories over a period of 60 years. From 1929 to 1933 he lectured at the Catholic college, St Mary's College, at Strawberry Hill in Middlesex, England, during which period he wrote his first two books. His first book, "Midsummer Night Madness," was published in 1932: it was a collection of stories partly based on his Civil War experiences. He afterwards returned to his native Ireland. He published novels; short stories; biographies; travel books; translations; literary criticism—including one of the rare full-length studies of the short story: The Short Story (1948). He also wrote a cultural history, The Irish, in 1947.

He served as director of the Arts Council of Ireland from 1956 to 1959, and from 1940 to 1990 was a founder member and editor of the Irish literary periodical The Bell. The list of contributors to The Bell included many of Ireland's foremost writers, among them Patrick Kavanagh, Patrick Swift, Flann O'Brien, Frank O'Connor and Brendan Behan. His Collected Stories were published in 1983.

He died on April 20, 1991 in Dublin at the age of 91.

Louis Leprince-Ringuet


Louis Leprince-Ringuet was a French physicist, telecommunications engineer, essayist and historian of science.

Louis Marie Edmond Leprince-Ringuet was the son of Félix Leprince - Ringuet, director of the École des Mines , and Marie Stourm, grandson of René Stourm, of the Institute, and great-grandson of the sculptor Victor Paillard, was a pupil at École Polytechnique. He continued his studies at Supélec from 1920 to 1923, then at Télécom Paris, before becoming an engineer in the submarine cable department.

From 1929, he worked with Maurice de Broglie at the X-ray physics laboratory. He taught physics at the École Polytechnique from 1936 to 1969 and at the Collège de France from 1959 to 1972.  In 1949 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences. In 1958, he obtained the appointment of a third professor of physics at Polytechnic: Bernard Gregory. He was commissioner for Atomic Energy from 1951 to 1971.

He obtained numerous recognition titles from his peers, such as several prizes from the Académie des Sciences and the Société Française de Physique. He defines himself as an experimental physicist and attaches great importance to experimentation. A practicing Catholic, he thought a lot about the relationship between science and religion. He was president of the Catholic Union of French scientists. In 1961, he became a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Author of several books (on political and social subjects) and laureate of the Ève Delacroix literary prize in 1958, he was elected member of the Académie française in 1966. He animated on television (single channel) a Quarter of an hour from 1967 to 1969. He was president of Jeunesses Musicales de France from 1971 to 1983. His commitment to Europe led him to be President of the French Organization of the European Movement from 1974 to 1990.

He died on December 23, 2000 in Paris at the age of 99.



André-François Marescotti


André-François Marescotti was a Swiss composer

Marescotti was born to an Italian father and a Savoyard mother.  After studying music in Geneva and Paris where he was a pupil of Roger-Ducasse, he became organist at Compesières in 1921, then professor at the Conservatoire in 1931. As a composer, he was awarded the Geneva Composition Prize in 1963.

Gunnar Berg


Gunnar Berg was a Swiss-born Danish composer. A leading exponent of serialism in Denmark, he is considered to have written the first Danish serial piece, his Cosmogonie for two pianos, in 1952.

Berg was born to Danish and Swedish parents in Switzerland. He studied with Herman David Koppel from 1938 to 1943, and moved to Paris in 1948, where he became associated with Honegger and Messiaen. In 1952 he married the pianist Béatrice Duffour, who would later record much of his piano music. In the same year he became the first Dane to attend the summer courses at Darmstadt.

Arriving in Paris in 1948 he became part of the international modernist movement in post-War Europe by joining the circle around Olivier Messiaen. Here, Berg had inspiring encounters with key figures such as John Cage, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Serial organization began to make its mark already in the newcomer’s Pièce for trumpet, violin and piano from 1949, and henceforth Berg uncompromisingly yet in his very own fashion would remain faithful to the complex expressive mode of musical modernism, from now on always composing within the theoretical and aesthetic framework of serialism.

Gunnar Berg died in Bern August 25, 1989.

Frédéric Lefèvre


Frédéric Lefèvre was a French novelist, essayist and literary critic.

He started in 1917 with a study on French Young Poetry. He became the editor of the Nouvelles Littéraires and would remain so until his death, from 1924 he specialized in interviews with well-known writers and celebrities of the day under the title: " An hour with ... "These interviews, published in the Nouvelles Littéraires, were published in 6 volumes (1924-1933).

Parallel to his journalistic activity, Frédéric Lefèvre led a literary activity, whose main testimonies are works of strong earthly flavor such as the Matinées of the red beech (929), Sol (1931), Samson, son of Samson (1900), the Love to live (1932), and philosophical and literary essays: Maurice Blondel's itinerary (1928), the Adhesion (1946), Biblical Images and My friends and my books (1950), which are of one humanist at a time objective and passionate.

01 November, 2017

T. Lux Feininger


T. Lux Feininger was a German-American painter, avant-garde photographer, author, and art teacher .

Feininger was born in Berlin to Julia Berg and Lyonel Feininger, an American living in Germany. His father was appointed as the Master of the Printing Workingshop at the newly formed Bauhaus art school in Weimar by Walter Gropius in 1919.

At sixteen, Lux Feininger became a student at the Bauhaus at Dessau, where he studied painting with Josef Albers, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky, played in the Bauhauskapelle, the Bauhaus jazz band, and participated in experimental theater. It was here that he began taking photographs and assumed the role of an artistic photojournalist chronicling the daily life at Bauhaus. Although no photographic studio was part of the Bauhaus until 1929, his photography was influenced by the aesthetic of László Moholy-Nagy, who lived adjacent to the Feininger family. Soon Feininger was selling his photographs to periodicals and newspapers through an agency. By 1929 his work was featured in Film und Foto, a survey of modern photography.

A retrospective of his early photography was held in 1962 at the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in 2001, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Manhattan, showed his works at an exhibit entitled, Dancing on the Roof: Photography and the Bauhaus (1923-1929).

In 1929 he also began to exhibit his paintings under a pseudonym, Theodore Lux, by which his stated intention was to avoid preferential treatment arising from the fame of his father. These are his first and second given names without his family name, he had never used his first name prior to this time. His initial paintings included maritime subjects, frequently of old sailing ships. From 1930 to 1935 he spent time in Paris. In 1936 Feininger left Germany and settled in the United States. His family had been targeted by the Nazis as undesirable foreigners participating in "decadent" cultural activities and they, along with many Bauhaus artists and designers, emigrated. The majority of the negatives for his collection of photographs had been left behind during his departure from Germany and none of these have been recovered.

In 1937 he had his first solo show of paintings in Manhattan. Transportation subjects such as train locomotives, as well as, toys were featured in his paintings along with what the New York Times described as, striking self-portraits. After the United States entered World War II, Feininger served in its army intelligence.

In 1947 he ceased using the pseudonym to sign his paintings and began using his family name in his signature. During the 1940s he continued his photography as a personal activity only, focusing upon transportation subjects that included ferries, ships, trains, and trucks as well as street scenes in Manhattan. He never exhibited this later photography, however, and completely abandoned the art in 1950s.

During the 1950s Feininger painted a mural in the home of John M. van Beuren that was being built near Morristown, New Jersey by architect, Bertrand Goldberg. A personal friend of Feininger, van Beuren was the brother of Michael van Beuren, a Bauhaus furniture designer who hosted Gropius and other Bauhaus staff and faculty members fleeing the Nazis, at a van Beuren family residence in México while they relocated and selected destinations in the Americas for refuge. The mural was not able to be relocated when van Beuren commissioned Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the next home built for van Beuren nearby on the family estate, but it was documented by other members of the Bauhaus community.

By the 1960s Feininger had adopted the semi-abstract prismatic painting style of his father and Kandinsky. He continued to paint for the remainder of his life.

A joint exhibition of Feininger's paintings was held in 2010 at the Berlin and the Manhattan galleries of Moeller Fine Art. In 2011 the Kunsthalle in Kiel, Germany presented a traveling exhibition, World Sailor: T. Lux Feininger on His 100th Birthday, that also was exhibited at the Lyonel Feininger Gallery in Quedlinburg, Germany, a town now on the UNESCO world heritage list.

Lux Feininger lived to be 101 years old, dying on July 7, 2011 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pierre Bonnard


Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters Les Nabis. Bonnard preferred to work from memory, using drawings as a reference, and his paintings are often characterized by a dreamlike quality. The intimate domestic scenes, for which he is perhaps best known, often include his wife Marthe de Meligny.

Bonnard has been described as "the most thoroughly idiosyncratic of all the great twentieth-century painters", and the unusual vantage points of his compositions rely less on traditional modes of pictorial structure than voluptuous color, poetic allusions and visual wit. Identified as a late practitioner of Impressionism in the early 20th century, Bonnard has since been recognized for his unique use of color and his complex imagery.

Marcel Brion


Marcel Brion was a French essayist, literary critic, novelist, and historian.


Anatole Jakovsky


Anatole Jakovsky was a French art critic who wrote substantially, collected widely, and established a museum in Nice for Naïve art, Musée international d'Art naïf Anatole Jakovsky.

Atole Jakovsky was born in Chişinău (now Republic of Moldova). In 1932, he moved from Romania to Paris. He met the secretary of Prokofiev who introduced him amongst the artistic colony of Montparnasse. There he developed a binding friendship with Jean Hélion and mingled with the abstract artists who revolved around Michel Seuphor and Joaquín Torres García.

Soon Anatole Jakovsky became an art critic focusing on the abstract painters and in particular the Abstraction "movement - Creation " of Auguste Herbin of whom he wrote the first monograph. His first papers are devoted to Calder, Arp, Delaunay, Hélion, Mondrian, Nicholson, Pevsner, Seligmann, Villon, Vulliamy, Braque, Picasso, Zadkine… All of whom become friends. He also maintained a very close relationship with Robert Delaunay. Together, in 1939, they created "The Keys of the Paving Stones", the first plastic book. It is a collection of poems signed "Anatole Delagrave", illustrated by Robert Delaunay and made of plates of rhodoïde fluorescent. It is the first and last time that Anatole Jakovsky had recourse to a pseudonym. The work was drawn with 100 plates which are on show at the

In the process of exploring various avenues of interest, Jakovsky met the naïve painter Jean Fous. There, in 1942, while helping him unpack books and various objects, he discovered canvases in a portfolio case of a Rousseau Customs officer which caught his interest. From that moment on, Anatole Jakovsky officially devoted himself to defend, promote and collect naïve painting.

In 1949, he made his first appearance with the Editions J Damase in Paris, his first significant work on this artistic expression: "Naive painting". He did not cease writing forewords, monographs, and critical pieces as well as organizing international exhibitions of Naïve art, gathering little by little probably the most significant collection of naïve paintings, which he eventually donated with all his files to the town of Nice in 1978.

Four years later, the Museum of the Castle of Sainte-Hélène bearing her name, preserved 600 canvases and drawings, sculptures, paintings under glass recalling the complete history of the Naïve art from the 17th century to the present time. Jakovsky's files have been integrated into the museum archives which holds exceptional documents legitimating the existence of this art among the first steps of all autonomous creations of the 20th century.

Parallel with his interest in naïve painting, Anatole Jakovsky developed an interest in Gaston Chaissac of whom he wrote the first biography; Alphonse Allais, whom he discovered; the history of tobacco, the collections of pipes which it compared with Marcel Duchamp; old robots; old postcards; the history of the Eiffel Tower; the Palate of the Factor Horse and the Rocks of Rotheneuf; art populaire…

Atole Jakovsky was a man in constant quest of discovery. He knew how to anticipate the taste of his contemporaries. He foresaw man on the moon and predicted World War II war as early as 1935. His eclecticism, his perspicacity, his pugnacity and stubbornness allowed us all to discover a whole new art culture.

Christoph Probst


Christoph Hermann Probst was a German student of medicine and member of the White Rose resistance group.

White Rose was the name of a resistance group in Munich in the time of the Third Reich. The group, founded in June 1942, consisted of students from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich who distributed leaflets against the Nazis' war policy. Christoph Probst belonged, along with the Scholl siblings, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell to the tightest circle, into which university professor Kurt Huber also came.

The members of White Rose put together, printed and distributed, at the risk of their lives, six leaflets in all. On 18 February 1943, the Scholls were distributing the sixth leaflet at the university when they were discovered by a custodian, who delivered them to the Gestapo.

Through his father, Hermann Probst, Christoph came to know cultural and religious freedom, and to treasure them. Hermann Probst was a private scholar and Sanskrit researcher, fostered contacts with artists who were deemed by the Nazis to be "decadent". After his first marriage with Karin Katharina Kleeblatt, Christoph's mother, broke up in 1919, he married Elise Jaffée, who was Jewish. Christoph's sister, Angelika, remembers that her brother was strongly critical of Nazi ideas that violated human dignity.

Probst went to boarding school at Marquartstein and Landheim Schondorf, which was also not conducive to fostering Nazi German ideas, and at 17, he matriculated. After military service, he began his medical studies with great earnestness. Aged 21, he married Herta Dohrn, with whom he had three children: Michael, Vincent and Katja.

Christoph Probst came rather late into the White Rose as he did not belong to the same student corps as Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and Willi Graf, and stayed for the most part in the background, as he had to think of his family. He did not write any of the White Rose's leaflets, only the design for the seventh one which Hans Scholl was carrying with him when he and his sister Sophie went to the university on 18 February 1943 to distribute leftover copies of the sixth leaflet.

When the Scholl siblings were arrested at the University of Munich, the Gestapo acquired proof against Probst. Before his execution he requested to be and was baptized by a Roman Catholic priest. He was executed on 22 February 1943, along with Hans and Sophie Scholl, despite asking for clemency during interrogation. He also requested a trial for the sake of his wife and three children, who were aged three years, two years and four weeks old. His wife, Herta Probst, was sick with childbed fever at the time.

Arvid Harnack


Arvid Harnack was a German jurist, economist, and German resistance fighter in Nazi Germany.

Harnack was the son of literary history professor Otto Harnack, the elder brother of Falk Harnack, Inge Harnack and Angela Harnack as well as the nephew of theologian Adolf von Harnack. From 1919 to 1923, he studied law in Jena (at the Friedrich Schiller University), Graz, and Hamburg and became a Doctor of Law in 1924.

From 1926 to 1928, he studied economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the United States, where in 1926 he married the literary historian Mildred Fish. In 1929-1930 he became a Doctor of Philosophy in Gießen, producing as his thesis Die vormarxistische Arbeiterbewegung in den Vereinigten Staaten ("The Pre-Marxist Workers' Movement in the United States"). Along with the Gießen economist Friedrich Lenz (1885–1968), he founded the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft zum Studium der sowjetischen Planwirtschaft ("Scientific Working Community for the Study of the Soviet Planned Economy"), or ARPLAN in 1931. Harnack was made First Secretary of this group, which counted about 50 members.

At the height of the Great Depression, the capitalist system had clearly broken down, and the Soviet model seemed to them to be an interesting alternative. Scientists, but also ardent revolutionary nationalists like Klaus Mehnert and Ernst Jünger and communist intellectuals like George Lukacs and Karl August Wittfogel took part in sessions. Harnack's hope, apparently, was that Germany could serve as a spiritual and economic bridge between East and West. The first meeting of the group took place on 3 and 4 January 1932. In August and September of the same year a three-week trip to the Soviet Union was organized with the help of the Soviet embassy in Berlin. The soviet economy was observed in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, Kiew and in the Dnieper region. Trips to the United States in 1937 and 1939 would follow, during which Harnack unsuccessfully tried to create a basis of communication with Washington.

In 1933, after Hitler's rise to power made it necessary to dissolve ARPLAN, Harnack was given a post as a scientific expert in the Reich Economic Ministry. The same year, he also finished his legal qualifications in Jena, successfully completing the junior law examination.

Together with his wife, Mildred, the writer, Adam Kuckhoff, and his wife, Greta, Harnack assembled a discussion circle which debated political perspectives on the time after the National Socialists' expected downfall or overthrow. By 1935, Harnack was active as a lecturer on foreign policy at the University of Berlin.

From 1937–41, Harnack, through a contact of his American wife, Mildred, held close contact with Donald Heath, the First Secretary at the US Embassy, to inform the US about Hitler's preparations for war. In 1941, after the Americans left Berlin, Harnack was contacted by the Soviets, and agreed to supply them with information about Hitler's war preparations. Unbeknownst to him, they applied the code names Balte and Corsican to him. While Harnack's relations with the Americans had been based on a mutual friendship with Heath, his relation with the Soviets was reluctant, as he didn't trust Stalin.

As a cover, Harnack became a member of the NSDAP in 1937. In 1935 came his first contact with Harro Schulze-Boysen, an air force lieutenant and descendant of an old German military family, and, in 1940, with the Communists Hilde Rake and Hans Coppi, as well as with Social Democrats like Adolf Grimme.

The resulting network was far reaching and didn't have a name. After the arrests, the Gestapo labeled them Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle). In the Gestapo's terms, a spy hitting Morse codes was a pianist, a group of pianists formed an orchestra, and, as Communists, they were red. In reality, the resistance group had members from all walks of life. Membership included people from all social classes and age groups, and also from varied religious ideologies, e.g., mainly communist and National Bolshevik, and Jews and Christians. The group was also 40% female, practicing the egalitarian beliefs that were also present in the Irish Citizen Army and Cumann na mBan during the 1916 Irish Rebellion. In 1941, Harnack sent the Soviets information about the forthcoming invasion. That same year, he published the resistance magazine, Die innere Front ("The Inner Front"). At about the same time, he received information from Rudolf von Scheliha about the Final Solution.


In 1941, through a Soviet Military blunder, addresses of members of the group were transmitted across Europe in an attempt by the Soviets to re-connect with the resisters. A year later, in July 1942, the Decryption Department of the Oberkommando des Heeres managed to decode the group's radio messages, and the Gestapo pounced. On 7 September, Arvid and Mildred Harnack were arrested. Arvid Harnack was sentenced to death on 19 December after a four-day trial before the Reichskriegsgericht ("Reich Military Tribunal"), and was put to death three days later at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. Infuriated about the diversity of the group, Hitler re-instated the death by hanging for them and secretly had the meat hooks installed at Plötzensee, which became publicly known only 2 1/2 years later during the July 20th executions. Harnack's wife Mildred was originally given six years in prison, but Hitler swiftly cancelled the sentence and ordered a new trial, which pronounced the desired death sentence. After execution, both of their bodies were released to Hermann Stieve, anatomy professor at Humboldt University, to be dissected for research. An honorary grave was installed for them after the war by Arvid's brother Falk Harnack, a member of the White Rose resistance group, at Zehlendorf Cemetery, the location of their remains is unknown.

Clark Terry


Clark Virgil Terry Jr. was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, composer, educator, and NEA Jazz Masters inductee.

He played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–51), Duke Ellington (1951–59), Quincy Jones (1960), and Oscar Peterson (1964-96). He was also with The Tonight Show Band from 1962 to 1972. Terry's career in jazz spanned more than 70 years, during which he became one of the most recorded jazz musicians ever, appearing on over 900 recordings. Terry also mentored many musicians including Quincy Jones, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Pat Metheny, Dianne Reeves, and Terri Lyne Carrington among thousands of others.

He died on February 21, 2015.

Osunlade


Osunlade is an American-born musician and music producer.

Osunlade was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He composed music for Sesame Street during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Afterward, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked with artists such as Patti Labelle and Freddie Jackson. After a stint there, he moved to New York, where he founded Yoruba Records because of The continued need to create the music i wanted. To date he has worked with such artists as Roy Ayers, Nkemdi, Salif Keita, and Cesária Évora. In 2006, he released an album titled Aquarian Moon, in 2007, he released an album titled Elements Beyond on the revived Strictly Rhythm Records, and, in 2009, he released the album Passage. He is a priest of the Yoruba religion of Ifá. Because of his beliefs, Osunlade's music has a deep spiritual root in Yoruba traditions that are also reflected in the name of his record label, album covers, and also the titles of some of the tracks he has remixed such as "Obatala y Oduduwa" and "Yemeya."

Anton Lembede


Anton Lembede was a South African activist and founding president of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). He has been described as "the principal architect of South Africa's first full-fledged ideology of African nationalism." Lembede had a strong influence on Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo and worked with them to reform the ANC, which the Youth League described as "a body of gentlemen with clean hands". He never saw the success of Black activism that enabled Black South Africans to be treated equally; he died in 1947, aged 33.

Mance Lipscomb


Mance Lipscomb was an American blues singer, guitarist and songster.

He was born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas on April 9, 1895. His father was an ex-slave from Alabama; his mother was half Native American (Choctaw). Lipscomb spent most of his life working as a tenant farmer in Texas. As a youth he took the name Mance short for emancipation from a friend of his oldest brother, Charlie.

He was discovered and recorded by Mack McCormick and Chris Strachwitz in 1960, during revival of interest in the country blues. He recorded many albums of blues, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley and folk music (most of them released by Strachwitz's Arhoolie Records), singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. Lipscomb had a "dead-thumb" finger-picking guitar technique and an expressive voice. He honed his skills by playing in nearby Brenham, Texas, with a blind musician, Sam Rogers. His first release was the album Texas Songster (1960). Lipscomb performed songs in a wide range of genres, from old songs like "Sugar Babe" (the first he ever learned) to pop numbers like "Shine On, Harvest Moon" and "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." In 1961 he recorded the album Trouble in Mind, released by Reprise Records. In May 1963, he appeared at the first Monterey Folk Festival, in California.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not record in the early blues era, but his life is well documented thanks to his autobiography, I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, narrated to Glen Alyn (published posthumously), and also a short 1971 documentary film by Les Blank, A Well Spent Life. He began playing the guitar at an early age and played regularly for years at local gatherings, mostly what he called "Saturday night suppers" hosted by someone in the area. He and his wife regularly hosted such gatherings for a while. Most of his musical activity took place within what he called his "precinct", the area around Navasota, until around 1960. Following his discovery by McCormick and Strachwitz, Lipscomb became an important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1960s. He was a regular performer at folk festivals and folk-blues clubs around the United States, notably the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, California.

He died in Navasota in 1976, two years after suffering a stroke.

Kenny Clarke


Kenneth Spearman Clarke nicknamed "Klook" and later known as Liaquat Ali Salaam, was a jazz drummer and bandleader.

He was a major innovator of the bebop style of drumming. As the house drummer at Minton's Playhouse in the early 1940s, he participated in the after hours jams that led to the birth of bebop, which in turn led to modern jazz. While in New York City, he played with the major innovators of the emerging bop style, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Curly Russell and others, as well as musicians of the prior generation, including Sidney Bechet. He spent his later life in Paris.

Jean-Pierre Leloir


Jean-Pierre Leloir was a French photographer who covered the music and theater scene since the 1950s, including: music concerts and rehearsals, industry reports, historical exhibitions, plays.

He was the favorite photographer of Jacques Brel and the author of the famous snapshot of Brel , Brassens and Ferré in January 1969 . He also participated, as a photographer, in the adventure of Jean Vilar's TNP and was one of the founding members of the magazine Rock & Folk .

He had also been closely associated with the adventure of the French record company Erato, of which he had been the official photographer for over thirty years. It was during this period that he photographed in rehearsal and in concert the greatest classical music artists of the time, and among others: Maurice André , Jean Pierre Rampal , Jean-François Paillard , Marie-Claire Alain .

F.R. Cristiani


François-René Cristiani is a French journalist and author.

After being a journalist in the music press, François-René Cristiani turned to general information. He was for a long time Secretary-General of the French Language Public Radio Community (Radio France, French-speaking Belgian Radio Television, Radio Canada and Radio Suisse Romande), before taking charge of France Culture's political service. François-René Cristiani is the author, in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Leloir, of Brel, Brassens, Ferré: Three men in a salon (Fayard / Chorus, 2003)

Mordechai Meirovitz


Mordechai Meirovitz was an Israeli telecommunications expert.

Meirovitz invented the code-breaking board game Master Mind. After being rejected by leading games companies, he sparked the interest of a Leicester-based company, Invicta Plastics, which restyled and renamed the game.

Released in 1971, the game sold over 50 million sets in 80 countries, making it the most successful new game of the 1970s.

Louis Guilloux


Louis Guilloux was a French writer born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, where he lived throughout his life. He is known for his Social Realist novels describing working class life and political struggles in the mid-twentieth century. His best-known book is Le Sang noir (Blood Dark), which has been described as a "prefiguration of Sartre's La Nausée."

Seymour Chwast


Seymour Chwast is an American graphic designer, illustrator, and type designer.

Chwast was born in Bronx, New York, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union in 1951. With Milton Glaser, Edward Sorel, and Reynold Ruffins, he founded Push Pin Studios in 1954. The bi-monthly publication The Push Pin Graphic was a product of their collaboration. Chwast is famous for his commercial artwork, which includes posters, food packaging, magazine covers, and publicity art. Often referred to as "the left-handed designer," Chwast's unique graphic design melded social commentary and a distinctive style of illustration. Today, he continues to work and is principal at The Pushpin Group, Inc. in New York City.

In 1979, he was hired by McDonald's to design on the first box for their Happy Meals. He is the font designer of Chwast Buffalo, Fofucha, Loose Caboose NF, and Weedy Beasties NF. He is a member of Alliance Graphique International (AGI).

William Addison Dwiggins


William Addison Dwiggins was an American type designer, calligrapher, and book designer.

Dwiggins attained prominence as an illustrator and commercial artist, and he brought to the designing of type and books some of the boldness that he displayed in his advertising work. His work can be described as ornamented and geometric, similar to the Art Moderne and Art Deco styles of the period, using Oriental influences and breaking from the more antiquarian styles of his colleagues and mentors Updike, Cleland and Goudy.

Frank A. Vanderlip


Frank Arthur Vanderlip Sr. was an American banker and journalist. He was president of the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank) from 1909 to 1919, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury from 1897 to 1901. Vanderlip is known for his part in founding the Federal Reserve System and for founding the first Montessori school in the United States, the Scarborough School and the group of communities in Palos Verdes, California.

Born in rural Illinois, Vanderlip worked in farms and factories until beginning a career in journalism in 1885. His efforts in financial journalism led him to become Assistant Secretary of the Treasury until the National City Bank hired him. While president of the bank, Vanderlip worked with the Jekyll Island group to develop a federal reserve; Vanderlip's later proposals also influenced the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. His later life was focused towards developing Palos Verdes and creating the Scarborough School at his estate, Beechwood, in Briarcliff Manor, New York, as well as gentrifying the hamlet of Sparta nearby. In addition, he helped found and was the first president of Sleepy Hollow Country Club. Vanderlip died in 1937 in New York Hospital, after weeks of treatment there.

Hal Foster


Harold Rudolf Foster (August 16, 1892 – July 25, 1982), better known as Hal Foster, was a Canadian-American comic book artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip Prince Valiant. His drawing style is noted for a high level of draftsmanship and attention to detail.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Foster was a staff artist for the Hudson's Bay Company in Winnipeg and rode his bike to Chicago in 1919 where he studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and soon found illustration assignments. The illustrator J. C. Leyendecker was an early influence on Foster.

Foster's Tarzan comic strip, adapted from Edgar Rice Burroughs's novels, began October 20, 1928. Foster returned to do the Tarzan Sunday strip beginning September 27, 1931, continuing until Burne Hogarth took over the Sunday Tarzan on May 9, 1937. He soon grew tired of working on an adaptation and began planning his own creation.

William Randolph Hearst, who had long wanted Foster to do a comic strip for his newspapers, was so impressed with Foster's pitch for Prince Valiant that he promised Foster a 50-50 split of the gross income on the strip, a very rare offer in those days. Prince Valiant premiered on February 13, 1937, continuing for decades. In 1944, Foster and his wife Helen moved from Topeka to Redding Ridge, Connecticut. In 1954, the couple was seen on television's This Is Your Life. In 1971, the Fosters retired to Spring Hill, Florida. In 1967, Woody Gelman revived some of Foster's earlier work for his Nostalgia Press.

In 1970, Foster was suffering from arthritis and began planning his retirement. He had several artists draw Sunday pages before choosing John Cullen Murphy as his collaborator and permanent replacement in 1971. Murphy drew the strip from Foster scripts and pencil sketches. Foster stopped illustrating (and signing) the Prince Valiant pages in 1975. For several years, he continued writing the strip and doing fairly detailed layouts for Murphy, eventually doing less and less of both the writing and art until prolonged anesthesia during an operation took his memory and he no longer remembered ever doing Prince Valiant. Foster attended the Comic Art Convention in 1969, and the OrlandoCon in 1974 and 1975. Foster was 73 when he was elected to membership in Great Britain's Royal Society of Arts, an honor given to very few Americans.

Foster died in Spring Hill in 1982.

George Arion


George Arion is a Romanian crime writer. He is also a poet, essayist, librettist and journalist. He is the Chairman of the Flacăra Publications, Chairman of the "Flacăra Prizes" foundation and Chairman of the Romanian Crime Writers’ Club.

His literary debut came in 1966 with the publishing of a collection of poems. But it is in 1983 that his novel-writing carrier really starts, with the publishing of Attack in the Library. Thanks to his first novel, George Arion quickly became known as the initiator of a renewal of the Romanian crime novel. He effectively gave a new impulse to the genre by having a refreshing foundation. He raised the literary standards and moved them away from their mostly propagandist use at the time.

George Arion stands out through an alert rhythm, short phrases, the use of colored language by his characters, a good dose of humour and an extraordinary irony, which are still his trademark. One can recognise the influences of Raymond Chandler, Boileau-Narcejac, San Antonio.

Louis Brauquier


Louis Brauquier was a French writer, poet and painter. His poetry is turned entirely towards the maritime world.