Annie Cohen-Solal

Annie Cohen-Solal
Nationality French
Institutions French Embassy
New York University
University of Berlin
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Université de Caen
Johns Hopkins University
Notable awards Légion d’Honneur

Annie Cohen-Solal is a French academic and writer. Born in pre-independence Algeria, she is part of the Jewish diaspora that left that country for France during the Algerian War of Independence.

Her most famous work is a biography of Jean-Paul Sartre, Sartre: A Life, which has been translated into sixteen languages. The French edition of her book about the rise of American artists from the 19th to the 20th century, Un jour ils auront des peintres (English title: Painting American), was awarded the Prix Bernier by the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Life

From 1989 to 1993, Cohen-Solal served as Cultural Counselor at the French Embassy in the United States. She has taught at New York University, the University of Berlin, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Cohen-Solal is a Professor of American studies at the Université de Caen as well as Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (Maryland).

In 2009, at the French Consulate in New York, she was presented with the title of Chevalier dans l’ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the ‘National Order of the Legion of Honor’), the highest decoration in France, by Ambassador Pierre Vimont.

In Spring 2010, Cohen-Solal published Leo and His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli, a cultural biography of Leo Castelli, America’s most influential art dealer, which was awarded the ArtCurial Prize for the best book on contemporary art.

Annie Cohen-Solal lives in Paris and Cortona (Italy).

Bibliography

References

  1. Dwight Garnermay (May 18, 2010). "A Smooth Operator, at the Vanguard of the Gallery World in the 1960s". The New Work Times.
  2. Deborah Solomon (June 11, 2010). "Leo Castelli’s New York Story". The New York Times.
  3. Tracey Warr (2 April 2015). "Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel, by Annie Cohen-Solal". Times Higher Education. Her book is both a moving tribute to a great artist and a gripping story. Its strength lies in placing Rothko in the contexts of a Europe devastated by wars and anti-Jewish violence, and America’s post-war cultural scene, and the light that Rothko’s life sheds on both these tumultuous eras.
  4. Monica Bohm-Duchen (April 2, 2015). "Mark Rothko: Towards the Light in the Chapel". Jewish Chronicle. Ultimately, the subject of this interesting but tantalising biography remains an enigma, just as his haunting abstract paintings elude rational analysis - which is, I suspect, exactly what Rothko himself would have wanted.
  5. Robert Fulford (March 31, 2015). "Rothko biography traces the artist’s spiritual values back to his Jewish childhood". The National Post.

External links

External video
Annie Cohen-Solal. Her latest book, “Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel," Charlie Rose, 4/5/2015
Annie Cohen-Solal: Jean-Paul Sartre, Cornell University, Oct. 24, 2008