Pierre Daix

Pierre Georges Daix
Pierre Daix on the cover of the magazine Femmes françaises, July 1950.
Born24 May 1922
Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris, France
Died2 November 2014(2014-11-02) (aged 92)
14th arrondissement of Paris, France
Resting placeIvry Cemetery, Ivry-sur-Seine

Pierre Georges Daix (24 May 1922 – 2 November 2014) was a French journalist, writer and art historian. He was a friend and biographer of Pablo Picasso.[1]

As a young man, Daix was an ardent Stalinist.[2] He joined the French Communist Party at the age of 17 in 1939 when the Communist Party was banned for supporting the German-Soviet pact.[3] In July 1940, he created a student club, the Centre laïque des auberges de la jeunesse (Claj), which served as a legal screen for the clandestine Union of Communist Students.[4]

When David Rousset (1912-1997) spoke out about Stalin's vast system of prison camps,[5] Daix attacked him as a liar, denying that the GULAG system existed in the Soviet Union, in a 16 page article in Les Lettres Françaises, entitled "Pourquoi M. David Rousset a-t-il inventé les camps soviétiques?".[6] Rousset brought libel charges against Daix and there was a public trial in France, which Rousset, who had told the truth about the camps, won in 1950.[7] [8][9] As a French communist, Daix continued his uncritical support for the Soviet Union for many years, though late in life he admitted he had been wrong.[10]

From 1980 to 1985, he was a journalist for Le Quotidien de Paris.[11]

References

  1. ^ Daix, Pierre at the Dictionary of Art Historians. Accessed 14 February 2013.
  2. ^ SOBANET, ANDREW (2015). "L'Homme que nous aimons le plus: French Intellectuals Celebrate Stalin's 70 th Birthday". French Forum. 40 (2/3): 47–66. ISSN 0098-9355. JSTOR 43954161.
  3. ^ "Pierre Daix (1922-2014), écrivain et historien de l'art". Le Monde.fr (in French). 2014-11-04. Retrieved 2022-02-01. Elève au lycée Henri-IV, il devient communiste l'année de son baccalauréat.
  4. ^ Daix, Pierre (2001). Tout mon temps : révisions de ma mémoire (in French). Paris: Le Grand livre du mois. ISBN 978-2-7028-6362-6. OCLC 468864607.
  5. ^ GAUDEMAR, Antoine de. "David Rousset, mort d'un témoinPremier à décrire «l'Univers concentrationnaire», il avait 85 ans". Libération (in French). Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  6. ^ Daix, Pierre (1949). Pourquoi M. David Rousset a-t-il inventé les camps soviétiques ? (in French). Les lettres françaises.
  7. ^ admin (2018-02-21). "Daix, Pierre". Rousset, David. Le procès concentrationnaire pour la vérité sur les camps: extraits des débats. Déclarations de David Rousset, plaidoirie de Théo Bernard, plaidoirie de Gérard Rosenthal. Paris: Éditions du Pavois, 1951; "Acknowledgements" and "Introduction." Daix, Pierre. Picasso: Life and Art. New York: Icon Editions, 1993, pp. vii-xiii; Krauss, Rosalind "In the Name of Picasso." October 16, no. 102 (Spring, 1981): 11, 14; Who's Who in France (online); Daix, Pierre. Tout mon temps (mémoires, 2001). Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  8. ^ Rousset, David (2000). "Procès contre les Lettres françaises. Première déclaration". Lignes. 2 (2): 161. doi:10.3917/lignes1.002.0161. ISSN 0988-5226.
  9. ^ "LE PROCÈS DAVID ROUSSET-" LETTRES FRANÇAISES " aura lieu malgré l'absence de MM. Pierre Daix et Claude Morgan". Le Monde.fr (in French). 1950-02-23. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  10. ^ "Tout mon temps", Pierre Daix (in French). 2022-01-02.
  11. ^ "Pierre Daix, écrivain et ancien résistant, est mort".


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