Édouard Pignon

Édouard Pignon (12 February 1905 – 14 May 1993) was a French painter of the School of Paris.

Biography Pignon was born into the family of a miner involved in the workers' movement. From a young age he was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya and himself painted whenever he was not working.

In 1925, Pignon, moved to Paris where he first worked at Citroën and later at the Renault factory and also became a member of the CGTU. In 1932, he participated in the creation and activities of the Indélicats group which published an anarchist magazine.

In 1933 he joined the French Communist Party while he was already a member of Association des écrivains et artistes révolutionnaires, where he met painters such as Jean Hélion, Auguste Herbin, André Marchand, Maurice Estève and Vieira da Silva as well as writers such as Louis Aragon. With Édouard Goerg and André Fougeron, in 1943 he clandestinely founded the Front National des Arts, a branch of the National Front. In 1956, after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he was one of ten intellectuals of the PCF alongside who wrote a letter to the party leadership expressing their dismay and condemning the suppression of the Hungarian uprising.

From 1986, Pinion began to lose his sight. Édouard Pignon who had been suffering from progressive blindness, died in 1993 in La Couture-Boussey.