Claude Pélieu

Pélieu was born to Pierre and Marguerite Pélieu on December 20, 1934, in a clinic in Pontoise, Val d'Oise, north of Paris. They lived in the village of Beauchamp, near Pontoise.

After leaving school in 1952, Pélieu participated in a group show in Paris at the Galerie du Haut-Pavé at the centre Saint-Jacques, 8 rue Danton.[1] Through the gallery's founder, priest Gilles Vallée, Pélieu met the future architect Henri Caubel who would later arrange retrospective shows of Pélieu's collages between 1999 and 2001. From 1952 to 1953, Pélieu worked at La Maison des amis des livres, a bookstore founded by Adrienne Monnier, a friend of Sylvia Beach, a second cousin of Mary Beach (Pélieu's second wife).

Some of Pélieu's first texts were published in 1955 in Le Libertaire, a political journal close to the Lettrist movement. At that time he was politically active in left-wing political groups. It was also around this time that Pélieu became interested in the poetry of Jacques Prévert but also in collage. He continued to draw assiduously, the sale of drawings provided a meager living. In 1956, he participated in a group show at the bookstore/gallery Le Soleil dans la Tête organized by the mother of Jean-Jacques Lévêque, Marguerite Fos.

Following trouble with the police, Pélieu was drafted into the French army at the height of the Algerian war. Whilst in Algeria, his texts appeared in Henri Chopin's poetry journal Cinquième Saison under the pseudonym Claude Lieu. He eventually poisoned himself by drinking stagnant water in order to be repatriated and discharged. After leaving hospital, on July 14, 1959, Pélieu met his first wife Lula Nash at a ball on Rue du Vieux-Colombier. The couple had a passionate relationship often accompanied by hardship, as Pélieu's physical and mental health continued to suffer from his experiences in Algeria and an addiction to heroin. Pélieu and Nash married on May 11, 1960, and lived between Paris and the Ile-de-Ré. In Paris, Pélieu frequented Jean-Jacques Lebel, lettrist Jean-Louis Brau and affichiste Raymond Hains.

Pélieu met Mary Beach, a recently widowed American expat, in 1962, and one year later Pélieu and Lula separated. In November 1963, Pélieu left for San Francisco with Mary Beach and Beach's teenage daughter. Upon their arrival, they contacted Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Bookstore in the hope of translating Allen Ginsberg's poetry and publishing Pélieu's work in English.[1]

In the United States, Pélieu lived between San Francisco and New York, with a nomadic existence that saw them travel extensively around the country. Pélieu's Automatic Pilot was published at the end of 1964 by Ed Sanders' Fuck You Press in New York, having been translated from French into English by Beach. She also translated, in collaboration with Pélieu, several books by William Burroughs, Bob Kaufman and Allen Ginsberg. In 1966, Beach founded a publishing imprint, Beach Books, Texts and Documents, publishing not only writing by Pélieu but also facsimile manuscripts by leading beat writers, pamphlets, literary magazines and folios of collages.

From 1965 onwards, Pélieu corresponded extensively with Burroughs, amongst others. He became increasingly interested in Burroughs' cut-up technique, which he used extensively in book-length texts such as With revolvers aimed...finger bowls. Pélieu's writing was also featured alongside that of Burroughs and Kaufman in a Cahier de l'Herne after he met Dominique de Roux.[1]

The years from 1969 to 1979 were particularly prolific for Pélieu in terms of publication, with a dozen or so books published through 1979, mostly by Bourgois and 10/18. He was also published by Fraçois di Dio's Soleil Noir, in editions that were accompanied by artworks by Erró and Miguel Ortiz Berrocal. In 1970, Pélieu and Beach left the United States for southern England, where they spent a number of years between London and Sussex. They returned to California in 1977 and later settled in upstate New York.

Between 1979 and 2002, Pélieu devoted himself increasingly to collage while continuing to write and publish episodically. At the end of the 1990s, several exhibits of his collages took place in France during a brief period when he and Beach returned to the country. His books continued to be published up until his death on December 24, 2002, in Norwich, New York.

• "Notes on Claude Pélieu". The Beach-Plymell Collection. Retrieved November 3, 2015.
• Devarrieux, Claire (December 30, 2002). "Adieu à Claude Pélieu" (in French). Libération. Retrieved November 3, 2015.
• Suel, Lucien (May 2007). "Claude Pélieu". La Nouvelle Revue Moderne.
• Claude Pélieu, Un amour de beatnik Lettres à Lula-Nash 1963-1964, ed. Benoit Delaune, Editions Non-Mieu, Paris, 2012.

• The Beach Plymell Collection - Mary Beach & Claude Pélieu Art
• Finding aid to Beat poets and poetry collection at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.