André Malraux, writer, 1920 - 1976

Treasures from the Jacques-Doucet Literary Library and Gallimard Archives
         

Exhibition from May 29 to July 18, 2026 

An exhibition by Galerie Gallimard, presented by the Jacques-Doucet Literary Library and Éditions Gallimard, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of André Malraux.

© Francesca Mantovanni / Éditions Gallimard

The Exhibition

André Malraux had forewarned his loved ones and his readers. He wished for only one epitaph: "André Malraux, writer." This exhibition is dedicated to that wish. Everything stems from and returns to writing in this life of adventurous antique dealing, political struggle and commitment, editorial and artistic passion, metaphysical questioning, and intimate modesty. One can speak of anything; but everything comes back to this: literature. And it is not insignificant that the last book André Malraux wrote, and the first to be published posthumously, was L'Homme précaire et la littérature (1977): a theory of Letters – extending from creation to reception – which is also, in its own way, a striking image of a life and thought. One that starts from the intimate awareness of the common condition – the presence of death within us, the feeling of absurdity that results, and the honor of remedying it by opposing it – to balance itself in the fraternal dream, subject like art to perpetual metamorphoses, which, from century to century and like an anti-destiny, comprises the literary creativity of women and men.

Here, then, through the collection of exceptional pieces chosen from the collections of the Jacques-Doucet Literary Library, where the writer's personal papers have been deposited, and the archives of Éditions Gallimard, are some remarkable insights into the literary thread of a life immersed in the great history of the imaginary, inseparable from his "library of admiration."

Exhibition Tour

1 "A young and original author." With Gide, at NRF, 1920-1928

2 "The whimsical elements of life." Early writings, 1920-1928

3 "Proposals from the Orient." Romantic Asia, 1928-1933

4 "Art is not submission, it is conquest." Literature and anti-fascism, 1934-1945

5 "A ferment of the world's nobility." For a library of admiration, 1932-1976

6 "What you will find here is what has survived." Antimemoirs and speeches, 1946-1976 

© Francesca Mantovanni / Éditions Gallimard

Publications

ANDRÉ MALRAUX
Man's Fate
Read by Denis Podalydès
Écoutez lire Collection -
Digital Audiobook,
Gallimard
Price: €18.99