It was with great sadness that I learned of the disappearance of Alain Jouffroy at the age of 87.
A writer, art critic, tireless magazine director and animator, a great witness of his century, politically committed to the avant-garde of his time, Alain Jouffroy was all this at once. Yet, in the thousand and one lives that have formed his own, he will remain above all, in our eyes, as a poet.
For he had an incandescent, burning vision of poetry that brought him, for a time, closer to the Surrealists, then to all the avant-garde movements of the second half of the twentieth century. But it was from him alone that he was able to draw this interior fire, from which he made the unique material of his many poems.
A passionate revolutionary in many fields – only thought of, to stick to artistic creation, to the artists he discovered or accompanied, the Buren, Erro, Fromanger, Hains, Hélion, Matta or Monory – he has been unfailing in his admiration exercises and friendships.
Art and poetry lose an attentive and generous actor.