Cassou, Jean (1897-1986). Eminent art historian and director of the Musée de l'Art Moderne, Paris. A native of the Spanish Basque Country, he also translated many texts from the Spanish, and is a novelist whose elusive fictions (e.g. Les Inconnus dans la cave, 1933) are marked by a discreet Romanticism and a protest against modern alienation. A non-Stalinist Communist, he took a heroic part in the Resistance and when imprisoned in 1941-2 wrote his beautiful Trente-trois sonnets composés au secret, published under the pseudonym Jean Noir in 1944.
[Peter France]
