Andre Malraux and Andre Gide

Andre
Malraux Andre Gide
David Seymour (photographer)

Paris: N.p., 1936. Vintage borderless photograph from an anti-fascist meeting in Paris in 1936, featuring novelist Andre Malraux speaking on a microphone with Nobel Prize winner Andre Gide seated at a table next to him. Photographer's rubber stamp to the verso, accompanied by manuscript annotations in pencil, black ink, and red felt ink.

Likely a photograph from a meeting of the Popular Front, a French alliance of various left-wing movements including communists and socialists during the interwar period. Andre Malraux was a widely-noted novelist and anti-fascist, who joined the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War on behalf of France. He later became Charles de Gaulle's Minister for Information, and later his Minister of Cultural Affairs, and would be remembered for his challenging viewpoints about the role of art in society. Andre Gide, as well, was a well known French novelist and staunch supporter of Communist Russia, until a trip to that country around the time of this photograph disillusioned him to that particular brand of communist thought.

Photographed by Magnum Photos cooperative member David "Chim" Seymour, with his rubber stamp on the verso. As Magnum was not formed until 1947, it is likely Seymour added the stamp at a later date to a print in his collection. Magnum, which included early members like Robert Capa, Maria Eisner, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, was created as an international cooperative owned and administered entirely by the photographers themselves, and was one of the first of its kind.

10 x 6.5 inches. Very Good condition, with mild professional restoration.


[Book #138595]