Maurice Lemaître (aka Moïse Maurice Bismuth) (23 April 1926, Paris - 2 July 2018) was a French

Lettrist Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture ...

painter (known for his use of

Hypergraphy Hypergraphy, also called hypergraphics or metagraphics, is an experimental form of visual communication developed by the Lettrist movement. Hypergraphy abandons the phonetic values communicated by most conventional written languages in favor of ...

), filmmaker, writer and poet. Lemaître was

Isidore Isou Isidore Isou (; 29 January 1925 – 28 July 2007), born Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, dramaturge, novelist, film director, economist, and visual artist who lived in the 20th century. He was the founder of Lettrism, an art ...

's right-hand man for nearly half a century, but began to distancing himself from

Lettrism Lettrism is a French avant-garde movement, established in Paris in the mid-1940s by Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou. In a body of work totaling hundreds of volumes, Isou and the Lettrists have applied their theories to all areas of art and culture ...

in the 2000s. Lemaître's paintings, films, photographs and sculptures have been shown in more than twenty personal exhibits in Europe and The United States. The

Pompidou Center The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

has acquired some of his paintings, as well as the

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (, Paris' Museum of Modern Art) or MAM Paris, is a major municipal museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries, including monumental murals by Raoul Dufy, Gaston Suisse, and Henri ...

, where in 1968, a large retrospective of his pictorial and film works took place. Poems by Lemaître were set to music by Michel Faleze and were sung by Marie-Thérèse Richol-Müller.

Publications

* ''Le film est déjà commencé ? Séance de cinéma'', préface by

, éditions André Bonne, collection Pour un cinéma ailleurs - Encyclopédie du Cinéma, Paris, 1952''Lettres de Guy Debord à Gil J Wolman'', édition privée hors commerce, 2017 ; nouvelle édition, 2020, p. 69. * ''Qu'est-ce que le lettrisme ?'', by Maurice Lemaître, Éditions Fischbacher, 1953 * ''Les Idées politiques du Mouvement lettriste'', Éditions Lettristes * ''Avant toute nouvelle interview'', Éditions Lettristes * ''Maurice Lemaître, Le Syncinéma, la Ciné-Hypergraphie et le Film Imaginaire'', Éditions Paris Expérimental. * ''Œuvres Poétiques et Musicales Lettristes'', Éditions Lettristes * ''50 Ans de Peinture Lettriste, Hypergraphique, Imaginaire'', Éditions Le Point Couleur * ''Le Mariaje du Don et de la Volga'', Collection Acquaviva / Marie-Laure Dagoit Éditions Derrière la salle de bains, Rouen, 2009 * ''Wanted'', Éditions AcquAvivA, Paris, 2009 * ''Sachez lire Lemaître'', Éditions AcquAvivA, Paris, 2009 * ''Roman Futur'', Éditions AcquAvivA, Paris, 2010 * ''Photos imaginaires médicales (partiellement) néo-nazies'', Éditions AcquAvivA, Berlin, 2013 * ''Galipettes'', Éditions AcquAvivA, Berlin, 2014

Filmography

;Director * 1951: ''Le film est déjà commencé ?'' * 1975: ''Six films infinitésimaux et supertemporels'' (short film) * 1976: ''Un navet '' (short film) * 2001: ''La Voie des dieux'' * 2002: ''Nos stars'' ;Writer * 1951: ''Le film est déjà commencé ? '' by Maurice Lemaître * 1973: ''La Rose de fer'' by

Jean Rollin Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil (3 November 193815 December 2010) was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his work in the fantastique Film genre, genre. Overview Rollins' career, spanning over fifty years, featured earl ...

;Actor * 1952: ''

Traité de bave et d'éternité ''Venom and Eternity'' (french: Traité de Bave et d'Éternité, lit=Treatise on Slobber and Eternity) is a 1951 French avant-garde film by Isidore Isou that grew out of the Lettrist movement in Paris. It created a scandal at the 1951 Cannes Film F ...

'' d'

: lui-même * 1955: ''

Around the World with Orson Welles ''Around the World with Orson Welles'' is a series of six short travelogues originally written and directed by Orson Welles for Associated-Rediffusion in 1955, for Britain's then-new ITV channel. Despite its title emphasizing the world, it was en ...

'' épisode ''

Saint-Germain-des-Prés Saint-Germain-des-Prés () is one of the four administrative quarters of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, France, located around the church of the former Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Its official borders are the River Seine on the north ...

'' * 1970: ''La Vampire nue'' by

* 2001: ''La Voie des dieux'' by Maurice Lemaître * 2004: ''Le Fantôme d'

Henri Langlois Henri Langlois (; 13 November 1914 – 13 January 1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often c ...

'', documentaire by Jacques Richard * 2007: ''La Nuit des horloges'' by

* 2012: ''Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film'', documentairy by Pip Chodorov

References

External links

http://www.mauricelemaitre.org/

https://web.archive.org/web/20081205012117/http://www.lettrisme-international.com/

Histoire du Lettrisme

on

UbuWeb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...

Film
Lemaître
on

Sound * Bismuth-Lemaître Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 1926 births 2018 deaths Lettrism Painters from Paris {{France-film-director-stub