Isidore Isou

Isidore Isou (izu; 29 January 1925 – 28 July 2007), born Isidor Goldstein, was a Romanian-born French poet, dramaturge, novelist, film director, economist, and visual artist who lived in the 20th century. He was the founder of Lettrism, an art and literary movement which owed inspiration to Dada and Surrealism. An important figure in the mid-20th Century avant-garde, he is remembered in the cinema world chiefly for his revolutionary 1951 film Traité de Bave et d'Eternité, while his political writings are seen as foreshadowing the May 1968 movements. Isidor Goldstein was born in 1925 to a prominent Jewish family in Botoşani. Despite his wealthy upbringing (his father was a successful entrepreneur and serial restaurateur), he left school at age 15, reading extensively at home and doing odd jobs. In 1944 he began his literary career as an avant-garde art journalist during World War II, shortly after the 23 August coup that saw Romania joining the Allies. With the future social psychologist Serge Moscovici, he founded the magazine Da, which was soon after closed down by the authorities. Soon after he became interested in the Zionist cause and collaborated with A.L. Zissu on the Zionist publication ”Mântuirea”. After several attempts to obtain a French visa earlier during the war, he left Romania clandestinely in August 1945, carrying a suitcase full of early manuscripts. He initially traveled to Italy, where fellow experimental poet Giuseppe Ungaretti gave him a letter of introduction and recommendation under the pseudonym "Isidore Isou" to French writer Jean Paulhan, which made his entry into the literary world of the newly-liberated Paris much easier. Intending a total artistic renewal starting from the most basic elements of writing and visual communication, Isidore Isou, assisted by Gabriel Pommerand, organized the first Lettriste manifestation in Paris, on 8 January 1946.