André Malraux
Biography
André Malraux was born in Paris in 1901. His parents divorced in 1905 and he was brought up by his mother and grandmother in the Paris suburbs. He finished school at age seventeen and went to work in a bookshop. However, he continued his education on his own, taking art courses at the Musée Guimet and the Louvre. By the age of twenty he was publishing articles on art criticism. The same year he also married Clara Goldschmidt. They later had a daughter, Florence.
In 1923 he went to Indochina where he was accused of stealing some bas-reliefs from a Cambodian temple and imprisoned. After his release he returned to France but was soon back in Indochina where he founded a short lived magazine. He started writing novels but continued to travel extensively, including to the Soviet Union, where he met Stalin as well as leading Russian intellectuals such as Pasternak, Gorky and Eisenstein. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, he joined up with the Republican forces and formed a squadron which he commanded.
He joined up in the tank corps in 1939 but was wounded and captured. He escaped and joined the Resistance. At the end of the war, he joined up with General de Gaulle and became his friend and a minister in his government, including minister of cultural affairs from 1959 to 1969. He died in 1976.
His novels are often violent and testify to his strong political views. After the war, he returned to his first love and wrote extensively on art.
Books about André Malraux
Gerda Blumenthal: André Malraux: the Conquest of Dread
Denis Boak: André Malraux
Curtis Cate: André Malraux: a Biography
Geoffrey T. Harris: André Malraux: a Reassessment
Hartman Geoffrey: André Malraux
Violet M. Horvath: André Malraux; the Human Adventure
Jean Lacouture: André Malraux (French and English versions)
Walter G. Langlois: Andre Malraux: the Indochina Adventure
Herman Lebovics: Mona Lisa’s Escort: André Malraux and the Reinvention of French Culture
Axel Madsen: Silk Roads : the Asian Adventures of Clara and André Malraux
Janine Mossuz-Lavau: André Malraux et le gaullisme (in French)
John Beals Romeiser: André Malraux: a Reference Guide, 1940-1990
Robert S. Thornberry: André Malraux et l’Espagne
Olivier Todd: André Malraux, une vie
Other sites
André Malraux
André Malraux (in English and French)
Malraux, Literature and Art
The Man from Nowhere (Review of Olivier’s Todd biography but with lots about Malraux)
André Malraux (in French)
André Malraux (in French)
André Malraux (in French)
Biographie d’André Malraux (in French)
André Malraux (1901-1976) (in French)
Bibliography
1921 Lunes en papier (Paper Moons)
1926 La Tentation de l’Occident (The Temptation of the West)
1928 Les Conquérants (The Conquerors)
1928 Royaume farfelu (The Kingdom of Farfelu)
1930 La Voie royale (The Royal Way)
1930 Oeuvres gothico-bouddhiques du Pamir
1933 La Condition humaine (Storm in Shanghai; Man’s Estate; Man’s Fate)
1935 Le Temps du mépris (Days of Wrath; Days of Contempt)
1937 L’Espoir (Man’s Hope; Day’s of Hope)
1943 Les Noyers de l’Altenburg (The Walnut Trees of Altenburg)
1946 Esquisse d’une psychologie du cinéma
1946 Scènes choisies
1946 N’était-ce donc que cela?
1947 Dessins de Goya du musée du Prado (Goya Drawings from the Prado)
1947 Psychologie de l’art (Le Musée imaginaire, La Creation artistique, and La Monnaie de l’absolu) (The Psychology of Art – Museum without Walls, The Creative Act, and The Twilight of the Absolute)
1950 Saturne: Essai sur Goya (Saturn; An Essay on Goya)
1951 Les Voix du silence (The Voices of Silence) (revised version of Psychologie de l’art)
1952 Le Musée imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale (Le Musée imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale, Des bas-reliefs aux grottes sacrées, Le Monde chrétien)
1955 Du musée
1957 La Métamorphose des dieux (The Metamorphosis of the Gods)
1965 Le Musée imaginaire (Museums without Walls) (revised version of Part 1 of Les Voix du silence)
1967 Antimémoires (Antimemoirs; Anti-Memoirs)
1970 Le Triangle noir
1971 Les Chênes qu’on abat . . . (Fallen Oaks; Felled Oaks)
1971 Oraisons funébres
1973 Roi, je t’attends à Babylone . . .
1973 Paroles et écrits politiques
1974 Lazare (Lazarus)
1974 La Métamorphose des dieux (revised version) (Le Surnaturel, L’Irréel, L’Intemporel)
1974 La Tête d’obsidienne (Picasso’s Mask)
1975 Hôtes de passage
1976 La Corde et les souris
1976 Le Miroir des limbes
1977 Et sur la terre . . . , illustrations by Marc Chagall
1977 L’Homme précaire et la littérature
1978 Saturne, le destin, l’art et Goya (revised version of Saturne: Essai sur Goya)
1979 De Gaulle par Malraux
1993 La reine de Saba: une”aventure géographique”
1996 Les réalités et les comédies du monde
1998 La grande pitié des monuments de France: débats parlementaires, 1960-1968
1998 Entretiens avec Tadao Takemoto, Au Signe de la Licorne
2006 Carnet du Front populaire (1935-1936)
2007 Carnet d’URSS (1934)