Roland Caillaux Explained

Birth Name:Roland Raymond Ferdinand Caillaud
Birth Date:January 5, 1905
Death Date:December 3, 1977
Alias:Roland Caillaux
Roland Caipland
Occupation:Actor, artist
Nationality:French

Roland Raymond Ferdinand Caillaud (January 5, 1905 – December 3, 1977) – known professionally as Roland Caillaux, and sometimes using the pseudonym Roland Caipland – was a French actor and artist. He is known for acting in several French films in the 1920s and 1930s, and for producing and publishing homoerotic illustrations in the mid 20th century.

Art

Caillaux has long been best known for illustrating 20 lithographies pour un livre que j'ai lu (20 lithographs for a book I read), which accompanied a text attributed to Jean Genet with images of male homosexuality, including explicit sexual activity. The book was published in April 1945, without the name of the author, the publisher or place of publication, with a print run of only 115 copies.

In this text, there are excerpts, however variants, of Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs and The Parade, poems published by Marc Barbezat in 1948 in a collection entitled Poems and signed this once Jean Genet (Editions L'Arbalète).[1]

Roland Caillaud's studio was located on Rue Boulard in the 14th arrondissement of Paris; it is there, between 1944 and 1945, that Jean Genet met the painter through model Édouard Dermit.[2]

Nicole Canet, who has rediscovered many of Caillaud's drawings, reports that he inherited money from his parents and lived as an annuitant after having been an actor. He lived at 5 rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. In a memoir, François Sentein says that when he traveled by bicycle to Montpensier street where Jean Cocteau lived, he kept his bicycle pump in his hand, for fear of it being stolen.[3]

Acting

Under the name Roland Caillaux, he appeared in the following films:

He performed in the following stage plays:

Paintings, drawings, illustrations

Some drawings seem to have been signed by the pseudonym Roland Caipland

Exposure(s)

External links

Notes and References

  1. Albert Dichy, Jean Genet, essai de chronologie, 1910-1944, Bibliothèque de littérature contemporaine, IMEC, 1988.
  2. Selon le témoignage d'Albert Dichy d'après Patrick Cardon, préface à la réédition de 20 lithographies pour un livre que j'ai lu, Lille, Question de genre/Cahier Gay Kitch Camp n°33, 1996
  3. In Minutes d'une autre année, 1945, Paris, Le Promeneur, 2003