Exposition Art Blog: Writer and Collage artist Claude Pélieu

Writer and Collage artist Claude Pélieu

Claude Pélieu (December 20, 1934 – December 24, 2002) was a French postmodernist poet and graphical artist. He lived in France until 1963, when he moved to the United States, where he spent the rest on his life. Pélieu wrote in French, German and English.Pélieu was born to Pierre and Marguerite Pélieu on December 20, 1934 in a clinic in Pontoise, Val d'Oise, north of Paris. They lived in the village of Beauchamp, near Pontoise.
After graduation in 1952, Claude Pélieu entered the School of the Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1952 he participated in a group show in Paris at the Galerie du Haut-Pavé in the Center Saint-Jacques on the rue Danton. Through priest Gilles Vallée, Claude met the future architect Henri Caubel who would later arrange retrospective shows of Claude Pélieu’s collages between 1999 and 2001. From 1952 to 1953, Pélieu worked as a library aide at La Maison des amis des livres, a bookstore founded by Adrienne Monnier, a friend of Sylvia Beach, a second cousin of Mary Beach (Claude Pélieu’s second wife).






Claude Pélieu’s first texts were published in 1955 in Le Libertaire (or Lib), a political journal close to the Lettrist movement. At that time he was politically active in the libertarian movement. This was the beginning of Claude Pélieu’s interest in the poetry of Jacques Prévert but also in collage. He continued to draw assiduously (the sale of drawings provided a meager living). In 1956, he participated in a group show at the bookstore/gallery The Sun in the Head organized by the mother of Jean-Jacques Lévêque, Marguerite Fos.
On July 14, 1959 Claude met Lula at a ball at the Vieux colombier Street. Lula and Claude had a passionate relationship often accompanied by misery. They married on May 11, 1960.






Pélieu met Mary Beach in 1962, and one year later Claude and Lula separated. The poet had an addiction to heroin. In November 1963, Pélieu left for San Francisco with Mary Beach.
In the United States, Claude Pélieu lived in San Francisco, New York and Hawaii. Automatic Pilot was published at the end of 1964, translated from French into English by Mary. She also translated, with the assistance of Claude, several books by William Burroughs, Bob Kaufman and Allen Ginsberg.
Years from 1969 to 1979 were particularly prolific for Pélieu, who had a dozen or so books published through 1979, mostly by Bourgois, Soleil Noir, and 10/18.
Between 1979 and 2002, Claude Pélieu devoted himself to collage while continuing to write and publish irregularly. At the end of the 1990s, several exhibits of his collages took place in France. He also had several new books published right up to his death December 24, 2002 in Norwich, New York.Wikipedia


Mary Beach and Claude Pelieu

Mary Beach and Claude Pelieu


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