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André Malraux Biography

André Malraux

(Paris, 1901-Créteil, 1976) French narrator and essayist, as well as historian and statesman, who embodied the prototype of the committed writer.The only child of separated parents, he spent his childhood in the suburbs of Paris.At the age of seventeen, he dropped out of high school, but soon acquired a vast self-taught culture and was integrated into the Parisian literary and artistic circles.

André Malraux

He participated in the avant-garde trends of the immediate postwar period, especially in the cubism of Picasso and Braque.He collaborated in Action , a magazine of this movement, and in 1921 he was hired as editor of the Simon Art Gallery; there appeared his first work, Monday on paper , illustrated by Fernand Léger and dedicated to Max Jacob.In 1922 he began his collaboration with the Nouvelle Revue Française .He traveled through Europe and visited numerous museums.

His passion for Khmer art led him to undertake, in late 1923, an archaeological expedition to the Cambodian jungle.There he discovered, in an abandoned temple, bas-reliefs that he extracted with the intention of selling them in Europe.The adventure cost him jail, but he was finally acquitted.He returned to France but soon returned to Saigon (in January 1925) to found a newspaper: L'Indochine , which disappeared the following year at the request of the colonial authorities.

The double experience of colonial society and opinion journalism played a decisive role in Malraux's life: parallel to his discovery of the Orient, he became aware of political and social realities and acquired a reputation as a writer committed that guided his life and his work.

Upon his return to France, he published The Temptation of the West (1926), an "essay-novel" that confronted an East of wisdom and a West in crisis.This work was followed by three novels, equally inspired by his contacts with Asia, in which he addressed the great ethical problems of the 20th century: Los conquistadores (1928), La via real (1930) and The human condition (1933); the latter would become his most famous book.

With the coming to power of Adolf Hitler, he became a "fellow traveler" of the communist party. The time of contempt (1935), dedicated to the victims of Nazism, opened a new novel cycle, linked to the fight against fascism.He participated in the Spanish Civil War alongside the Republicans and took part in aerial combat with the international brigades.The result of this experience was the epic novel La Esperanza (1937), of which he made a film adaptation the following year.

In 1939 he left the communist party, and shortly after he was mobilized as a volunteer in France.Captured and later released, he refused to commit himself against the occupation due to his distrust of the influence of the Communists within the Resistance movement, and devoted himself to writing.Finally incorporated into the Resistance in the spring of 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo in July, but a month later was freed thanks to the hasty withdrawal of the Germans, a prelude to the imminent Allied victory in World War II.

The following year he had a meeting with Charles de Gaulle, whose provisional government (1945-1946) was Minister of Information and whom he benefited with his talent as a speaker, publicly denouncing the influence of communism and propaganda Stalinist in the Epilogue to The Conquerors (1948).In 1951 he published The voices of silence , the most important of his writings on art, where he defended the freedom of the artist against the determinisms of both Marxism and psychoanalysis.

He also dedicated three volumes to The imaginary museums of world sculpture (1952 to 1955) and published the first part of what would be a great epic of the arts: The metamorphosis of the gods (1957).After de Gaulle's return to power in 1958, he became Minister of Culture (between 1959 and 1969).

In 1967 Antimemorias appeared; in 1971, Les Chênes qu'on abat , an account of his last interview with De Gaulle; in 1974, The obsidian head ; then Lázaro (1974) and Hôtes de passage (1975).In addition to his autobiographical essays, he published a second part of The metamorphosis of the gods , entitled The unreal (1974), and then a third, The timeless (1976).In 1977, his only work devoted to literary creation, a synthesis of innumerable prologues and scattered articles, appeared posthumously: L'Homme précaire et la Littérature .

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