Michel Ragon

Vocation

Notable

French writer and professor of literature and historian, an autodidact. Ragon lost his father at eight. When moving to Nantes at fourteen with his mother, he spent a lot of time in the libraries of the houses and apartments where his mother worked as a housekeeper. He discovers the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, André Gide and frequently visits the art museum in Nantes. At the end of WWII, he moves to Paris where he meets artists and connects with the Cobra movement in 1949. COBRA (or CoBrA) was a European avant-garde movement active from 1948 to 1951. From 1954 he starts to write poems and articles. In 1964, Michel Ragon becomes art critic and historian of art and modern architecture. Besides his work as a writer and art critic, he works for the ministry of foreign affairs (he travels to Japan, North and South America, Israel, Algeria, Cuba and the URSS) and teaches at the Ecole des Arts décoratifs. His most famous works are: Les Mouchoirs rouges de Cholet, La louve de Mervent en Le Marin des Sables. Link to Wikipedia (French)