Paris (AFP)
The libertarian writer Michel Ragon, author notably of "The memory of the vanquished" or of "Red handkerchiefs of Cholet", died at the age of 95 years, one learned Friday from its editor.
"Michel Ragon has just passed away at the age of 95," said publisher Albin Michel in a statement to AFP.
Self-taught, Michel Ragon was also an art critic and a recognized architectural historian.
Born in June 1924 in Vendée, orphan of father at 8 years old, Michel Ragon spent all his childhood in this region, the framework of many of his novels.
At fourteen, he had to leave school, and the city of his childhood, Fontenay-le-Comte, to go to work in Nantes "la grise" first as a shopping boy, then a handler or even an accounting assistant.
Raised in Paris at the age of 20, he did all the trades (from factory worker to bookseller) and above all frequented the world of proletarian writers (in particular Henry Poulaille), the anarchist world and that of contemporary art which will always remain his favorite subjects.
Before embarking on writing, he had a Jack London life roaming around the world (he was a farm worker in England, left for Japan by embarking on a freighter ...). He was a hippie before the hour.
From the 1980s he became the great novelist of Vendée, "Les Mouchoirs rouges de Cholet" (1984), prize for readers of Elle, of the libertarian epic, "La Mémoire des vaincus" (1990), "Un si bel espoir "(1999), while continuing an autobiographical work with notably" My mother's accent "(1980)," From one bank to another "(1995) and a work of art critic and architecture with "On the side of art brut" (1996), "Journal of a disillusioned art critic" (2013).
He was an "art critic with a formidable flair who knew how to spot painters who have become essential from the start," said his editor. He had notably made known the CoBrA movement in France and followed with faithful friendship the work of Soulages, Hartung, Atlan, Dubuffet.
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