resistant, art lover and historian

In one hundred years of existence, Daniel Cordier (1920-2020), secretary of Jean Moulin during the occupation, had in reality at least three lives: that of resistant, or rather of “free” as he preferred to be defined; that of a post-war art merchant and collector; And finally, at the ripe age, that of meticulous historian. The exhibition of the Musée de la Liberation de Paris which is devoted to it is therefore logically available in three rooms evoking these successive lives. And in view of his posthumous memoir book Retro-chaos, which has just been published.

A spy of resistance

Entitled “The Espion Amateur d’Art”, the museum’s journey begins by presenting many moving documents concerning the resistance: in addition to false papers of identities in the (false) name “Charles Dandinier” but in recognizable photo, there are reports of its superiors in London, which praise its progress in the art of coding and transmissions, while it is studying to participate in the Action Service), Also emit reservations about his political opinions too much linked to the extreme right.

His eleven months of hiding service, with Jean Moulin, are mentioned by a coding machine and the photos of the small team of letters which he recruits, in Lyon and then in Paris, to keep in touch with all the movements of the resistance that his chief must unite under the aegis of Charles de Gaulle. It is impressive to notice the youth of all these faces!

Of the resistant to the art dealer

“Cordier himself has only twenty-four years old at the Liberation, he is frustrated at not having fought weapons in hand and he is a little lost,” said Sylvie Zaidman, exhibition commissioner and director of the museum. The young man, initiated by Jean Moulin, is then interested in contemporary art. “As an amateur, he will want to become a painter, then art dealer, then collector and finally donor of his collections,” sums up Alfred Pacing, honorary director of the Georges-Pompidou center, who knew him well.

From 1973, the latter will accompany him in the gift, in several times, hundreds of works in the center. A permanent deposit was conceded at the Musée des Abattoirs in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), which exhibits the Cordier collection, by rolling. In the room devoted to his artistic commitment, a selection of the works of the artists he supported (Jean Dubuffet, Roberto Matta, Jean Dewasne, etc.) is presented, as well as photos and programs of the Parisian gallery which he owned from 1956 to 1964.

Jean Moulin’s historian

Finally, in 1977, the story catches up with him: invited to a program of Screen folders Consecrated to Jean Moulin, Daniel Cordier attends, petrified, to a session of “slander”, of “venomous caricature” against the great man, accused by Henri Frenay, former leader of the Combat movement, of having been a “cryptocommistic”. To answer with facts, he began to immerse himself in the archives and draws from 1989, a monumental biography of Jean Moulin in four volumes.

“We discover, however, that in 1945, he thought of writing a book,” notes Sylvie Zaidman, who presents a letter from his secretary alluding to it. The museum’s audiovisual devices also allow, in this last room, to listen to the interviews given by Daniel Cordier at the end of his life on this rigorous commitment. This great witness, compulsive to collect art brut, was just as much to bring together the archives. We must have restored the historical truth about the personality of his “boss” who was also the luminous mentor of his youth.