Pierre Georges Daix | |
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Born | 24 May 1922 Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris, France |
Died | 2 November 2014 14th arrondissement of Paris, France | (aged 92)
Resting place | Ivry Cemetery, Ivry-sur-Seine |
Pierre Georges Daix (24 May 1922 – 2 November 2014) was a French journalist, writer and art historian. He was a friend and biographer of Pablo Picasso.[1]
As a young man, Daix was an ardent Stalinist.[2] He joined the French Communist Party at the age of 17 in 1939 when the Communist Party was banned for supporting the German-Soviet pact.[3] In July 1940, he created a student club, the Centre laïque des auberges de la jeunesse (Claj), which served as a legal screen for the clandestine Union of Communist Students.[4]
When David Rousset (1912-1997) spoke out about Stalin's vast system of prison camps,[5] Daix attacked him as a liar, denying that the GULAG system existed in the Soviet Union, in a 16 page article in Les Lettres Françaises, entitled "Pourquoi M. David Rousset a-t-il inventé les camps soviétiques?".[6] Rousset brought libel charges against Daix and there was a public trial in France, which Rousset, who had told the truth about the camps, won in 1950.[7] [8][9] As a French communist, Daix continued his uncritical support for the Soviet Union for many years, though late in life he admitted he had been wrong.[10]
From 1980 to 1985, he was a journalist for Le Quotidien de Paris.[11]