Biographies / autobiographies

The autobiography, translated into French for the first time, of Ré Soupault (1901-1996), trained at the Bauhaus, photographer, filmmaker, stylist, writer and traveler, translator of Dada and Surrealism, major protagonist of European artistic, literary and intellectual life, and companion of the avant-garde throughout the 20th century.

A text by the Swiss artist, imbued with highly personal reflections on her relationship with creativity, notions of gender, motherhood, and the place of parenthood in the world of work (more specifically, the tensions inherent in the dual role of mother and artist).

The raucous autobiography of the famed New York free jazz pioneer.

In this essay, Alexandre Gérard recounts his discovery and interpretation of the work of his great-uncle, the artist Jean Dupuy (1925-2021).

An autobiographical account and uncompromising meditation on the meaning of design, in the voice of the man who represented the ethical and political conscience of the discipline in the second half of the 20th century.

This enchanting convening of texts and images, diaries and epistles celebrates a unique voice and ongoing dialogue around the erotics of art.

In this artist's book, Hubert Renard's search for himself leads us to meet other characters who have marked out his private life, like so many essential players in his accomplishment.

What meaning can be given to abstract art forms when the figurative is evacuated in favor of pure gesture and color? This book investigates the case of Hans Hartung, delving into the depths of his psyche—at the frontier between aesthetics, neuroscience, psychoanalysis and medicine.

A fictionalized biography of Guy de Cointet (1934-1983).

The first book dedicated to Cornelia B. Sage Quinton (1876-1936), this essay traces the visionary career of the first woman director of a major art museum in the United States.

Hans Ulrich Obrist leads readers into the world of path-breaking Syrian artist Simone Fattal in this intensely personal volume.

Ross Bolleter's latest collection of poems draws on his experience as a musician/composer especially in the field of ruined piano, and includes tributes to Thelonious Monk and other luminaries who have inspired him over a lifetime of musical and poetic creation. This new book explores the themes of childhood, eros, love, death—and football.

The first documentary account by artist, curator and publisher Ludovic Burel, Le laboratoire de fermentation (The fermentation laboratory) retraces four years of investigation, carried out on several continents, into wild and cultivated plants and the means of fermenting them, questioning our relationship to both the human (individual and society) and the non-human (plant and other).

An experience of introspection, an epistemological reflection and an act of resistance in the face of depersonalization, around the question of the name.

In this first critical volume and biography of the Indian artist Lalitha Lajmi (1932–2023), author Skye Arundhati Thomas delves into Lajmi's archives, papers, letters, and sketchbooks in pursuit of clues about the artist's character and path.

A partly autobiographical novel that the German surrealist artist and author Unica Zürn (1916-1970) wrote for her ten-year-old daughter in 1953, although it would never be published in her lifetime. This is the first translation of the tale from German into English.

This critical biography guides readers through artist Magda Stawarska's practice via a series of journeys—from the streets of Istanbul to the canals of Venice and across the waters of Zanzibar.

The story/manifesto of an architect's life: a re-reading of Gilles Perraudin's career by himself, enabling us to retrace the path of a thought in perpetual motion.

This monographic essay explores Iris Clert, an unclassifiable and emblematic figure of the 1960s artistic avant-garde.

The culmination of a multidisciplinary project developed over ten years, where Miquel Mont blends real and fictional autobiographical elements to explore the economy of affects.

The fifth volume of the bie bao series presents Ilya Zdanevich's fictional auto-biographical writings based on his one-year stay in Istanbul in 1921.

The first of four diaries written by Anne Truitt (1921-2004), a major figure in 20th-century American art.

This latest book—part of a ten-volume series that began with Léman in 1990—takes up and redistributes the elements of an investigation whose main material is autobiographical. The author restores an imaginary "childhood" that he writes about in a poetic attempt to understand it, and never ceases to "become".

Wesley Brown narrates the day when trumpeter Miles Davis was assaulted by the New York Police Department. A dramatic and humorous story, told from multiple perspectives including that of Frances Taylor, Davis's wife, and the musicians in Davis's bands: a timely meditation on the psychological impact of police brutality, through the lens of a day in the life of Miles Davis.

The life and work of the precursor of happening and streaking in Japan, Itoi Kanji (aka Dadakan, 1920-2021): the first comprehensive chrono-biographical study in Western language on the great Japanese Dadaist nudist ascetic, with a rare iconography.

New expanded edition of an essential text for defining the thought of composer Pierre Henry (1927-2017): a musical biography in the sense of a diary and an autobiography in forty-two sequences that accompanied him in various forms between 1977 and 2005 (audio download link included).

Writer Inge Bondi sheds fresh light on the life of her close friend and colleague, the Austrian American photographer Ernst Haas (1921–86), an early innovator in color photography, whom she first met in New York's Magnum offices in 1951.

In this memoir, Harlem-born trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah recounts decades of national and international touring with the Sun Ra Arkestra and charts the rise of New York loft jazz scene, offering a fascinating portrait of advanced music in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Igor Terentiev's biography of Ilya Zdanevich published in 1919 in Tbilisi.

A very personal text by Yann Chateigné Tytelman, curator and critic, who establishes a link between his past, his childhood and his career as a curator, his artistic choices, his exhibitions, often in connection with the theme of silence.

An experience of introspection, an epistemological reflection and an act of resistance in the face of depersonalization, around the question of the name.

First Arabic translation of Virginie Despentes' cult book King Kong Theory.

An autobiographical artist-talk as a performance delivered from the artist's bed over Zoom.

The oral and visual autobiography of one of American photography’s most legendary figures.

A sketch history of the 1980s American home-taping and electronic music scene through the career of sound artist, field recordist, percussionist, and visual artist Jeph Jerman.

A life, between art and cinema (the Swiss film curator’s visual autobiography, with guest appearances from Fassbinder, Warhol, Waters and many more).

A poetic journey through the anxious spaces of memory, explored here by one of the most powerful voices of Mediterranean poetry of his generation.

A very personal literary narrative, with a singular writing, of a migrant's experience of wandering and borders.

The French choreographer looks back on his career in a very personal text, both playful and poetic.

The English translation of Zdanevich's Dadaist autobiographical lecture in Paris in 1922, where he adopts the name Iliazda. In this entertaining lecture, the achievements of the avant-garde is presented as a combination of zaum, polymorphous sexuality, aleatory forms and scatological interpretation of culture.

The first comprehensive monograph of the art and life of Iranian American artist of Armenian descent Sonia Balassanian: in this deeply personal portrait, author Dr. Omar Kholeif weaves together poetry, memoir, and historical anecdote to trace the contours of Balassanian's world.