Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism. His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
Jean Genet was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels The Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers and the plays The Balcony, The Maids and The Screens.
Hélène Cixous is a French writer, playwright and literary critic. During her academic career, she was primarily associated with the Centre universitaire de Vincennes, which she co-founded in 1969 and where she created the first centre of women's studies at a European university. Known for her experimental writing style and great versatility as a writer and thinker, she has written more than seventy books dealing with multiple genres: theatre, literary and feminist theory, art criticism, autobiography and poetic fiction.
Philippe Sollers was a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde literary journal Tel Quel, which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal L'Infini, published first by Denoel, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor.
Albert Memmi was a French-Tunisian writer and essayist of Tunisian Jewish origins. A prominent intellectual, his nonfiction books and novels explored his complex identity as an anti-imperialist, Zionist, and self-described "Jewish Arab."
Pierre Guyotat was a French literary avant-garde writer who wrote fiction, non-fiction, and plays. He is best known for his 1967 novel Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats, about his experiences in the Algerian War, and his 1970 novel Eden, Eden, Eden, which was banned for its explicit content. Many of his novels are set in imaginary north African war zones. Idiotie won the Prix Medicis.
Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux is a French writer who was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology.
Leo Castelli was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which Castelli showed were Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Op Art, Color field painting, Hard-edge painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, and Neo-expressionism.
Marcelin Pleynet is a French poet, art critic and essayist. He was Managing Editor of the influential magazine Tel Quel from 1962 to 1982, and co-edits the journal L'Infini (Gallimard) with Philippe Sollers. He was Professor of Aesthetics at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1987 to 1998. He has published numerous monographs on 20th-century art, notably Situation de l’art moderne: Paris-New York, Henri Matisse, Robert Motherwell: La vérité en peinture, Les Modernes et la tradition, Les États-Units de la peinture and L’art abstrait. He has also published books of poetry and the novel Prise d’otage, and an edition of Giorgione et les deux Vénus.
Baroness Suzanne Lilar was a Flemish Belgian essayist, novelist, and playwright writing in French. She was the wife of the Belgian Minister of Justice Albert Lilar and mother of the writer Françoise Mallet-Joris and the art historian Marie Fredericq-Lilar.
Bertrand Castelli was a French producer, director, lighting designer, choreographer, painter and writer best known as the executive producer of many productions of the rock musical Hair in partnership with the show's main producers Michael Butler and Annie Fargue. Castelli was instrumental in helping the show reach Broadway and would later lead the effort to introduce Hair to a worldwide theatre audience.
Nicole Védrès, born Nicole Henriette Désirée Charlotte Cahen dit Nathan dit Rais, was a French author, columnist, essayist, journalist, screenwriter and film director.
Fernande Olivier was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Picasso painted over 60 portraits of Olivier.
François Noudelmann is a contemporary French philosopher, university professor and radio producer.
Rainy Taxi (1938), also known as Mannequin Rotting in a Taxi-Cab, is a three-dimensional artwork created by Salvador Dalí, consisting of an actual automobile with two mannequin occupants.
Diana Widmaier Picasso is a French art historian specialized in modern art, living in Paris.
Catherine Cusset is a best-selling French novelist and the author of Life of David Hockney: A Novel, The Story of Jane, and 12 other novels published by Éditions Gallimard between 1990 and 2018. Some of her novels are described as autofiction, a French literary movement that is a hybrid of fiction and autobiography. Others are more romantic, but all share some recurring themes: the family, desire, and cultural conflicts between France and America. She stands out from her contemporaries with a direct, incisive, visual form of writing, marked by the influence of Anglo-Saxon novelists.
Maurice Sartre is a French historian, an Emeritus professor of ancient history at the François Rabelais University, a specialist in ancient Greek and Eastern Roman history, especially the Hellenized Middle East, from Alexander to Islamic conquests.
Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre was a French translator and editor, adopted by the writer Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964.
