Isodore Isou

Isidore Isou (1925-2007) was an artist of Romanian origin. Arriving in Paris in August 1945, at only 20 years old, he quickly became known in intellectual circles, meeting personalities such as André Breton, André Gide and Tristan Tzara. With, and sometimes against them, he would become one of the last defenders of the avant-gardes. Alongside Gabriel Pomerand, he founded the Lettrist movement, which he presented in 1946 during a provocative intervention at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. Thanks to the support of Jean Cocteau and Jean Paulhan, Isou saw his work published in La Nouvelle Revue française in 1947. In his theoretical essay, Introduction to a New Poetry and a New Music, he laid the foundations of Lettrism: he analyzed the decomposition of poetry since Baudelaire and announced the advent of the letter, which he considered to be the culmination of this purification process. For him, the letter and, more broadly, the sign, constituted the foundation of a radical renewal of the arts. An insatiable graphomaniac, Isou wrote several hundred works, extending his thinking to many disciplines: the visual arts, architecture, politics, economics, mathematics, medicine, psychology and even erotology, which he explored through his method of "kladology", an approach invented to reinvent all branches of culture.