Photographie de Claude Roy, Pablo Picasso, Elsa Triolet, Louis Aragon veillant le cercueil de Paul Eluard. Avec le faire-part de son décès

Name: Photographie de Claude Roy, Pablo Picasso, Elsa Triolet, Louis Aragon veillant le cercueil de Paul Eluard. Avec le faire-part de son décès
SKU: 29118
Author: [ÉLUARD] Izis Bidermanas

[Paris, Maison de la Pensée, November 21, 1952].

1 gelatin silver print (240 x 175 mm), a press print on Kodak paper, credit stamped on verso (Izis - Paris-Match). Plus 1 bifolium (210 x 270 mm closed).

A rare photograph of Éluard's four closest friends at the time of his death, all Communists, gathered around and keeping watch over the poet's coffin, three days after his death.

On the morning of 18 November 1952, at nine o’clock, Paul Éluard died of a heart attack at his home, 52 avenue de Gravelle in Charenton-le-Pont. Although the Council of Ministers under Antoine Pinay refused him a state funeral (Paul Valéry had been the last writer to receive that honor, in July 1945, at General de Gaulle’s request), Éluard was given a grand funeral at Père-Lachaise, where he was laid to rest in the “Communist Pantheon” (Danielle Tartakowsky) of the cemetery’s 97th division — inaugurated by the transfer of Barbusse’s tomb before the Mur des Fédérés on the first anniversary of his death in September 1936, and followed by the burial of Paul Vaillant-Couturier nearby in October 1937.

The death announcement read: “Le Comité National des Écrivains vous prie d’assister aux Convoi et Inhumation de Monsieur Paul Éluard, Médaille de la Résistance […] qui se feront le Samedi 22 courant à 13h. 45 très précises, 37 rue du Louvre, Paris-2e. Le Corps sera exposé le vendredi 21 de 10h. à 21 heures à la «Maison de la Pensée».”

At this same Maison de la Pensée, on avenue Gabriel, four years later Louis Broder, together with Picasso, Braque, Ernst, Léger, Miró and the other artists of Un poème dans chaque livre, would present that book as a final tribute from Éluard’s painter friends, each of whom had chosen and illustrated one of his poems.

Many of Éluard’s close friends filed past the coffin as it lay in state, and other photographs of the occasion are known, notably with leaders of the Communist Party. This particular image was taken by the photographer Izis for Paris-Match, and appears full-page, in a tighter crop, in the long report published in issue 194 of 29 November 1952, which covered the event with the caption: “La garde des militants : le parti communiste, représenté par son grand quatuor (Picasso, Claude Roy, Elsa Triolet et son mari Louis Aragon) a fait à Éluard des funérailles dans le style moscoutaire avec masque du mort et portrait plus vrai que nature.”

#29118

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