Suzanne Lipinska, owner of the artistic residence Le Moulin d’Andé, died on September 30 at the age of 94. “The great lady with the blond braid flew away to sail on the Seine and watch over the Moulin to which she has dedicated her whole life”, announces the Moulin d’Andé Facebook page.
“An endearing and lively personality, Suzanne Lipinska will have devoted sixty years to making the Moulin d’Andé, residence of artists and cultural events, a high place of the Eure, an exceptional place at the service of the influence of the cultural life of our country”, indicated for his part the prefect of Eure Simon Babre in a press release. On September 3, already Commander of Arts and Letters, Suzanne Lipinska received the insignia of Officer of the Legion of Honor
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Born in Jette (Belgium), she settled in 1956 in this 12th century building overlooking the Seine. “She left a small phalanstery with three bedrooms, without heating and a few sheepfolds”recalled Stanislas Lipinski, grandson and vice-president of the Moulin d’Andé association. “Frequently frequenting musical and literary circles in Paris in the 1950s, she participated in the first congress of black artists and writers at the Sorbonne and quickly brought her friends to the Moulin who found there an energy and a particular creative atmosphere”he explained to AFP.
In particular the French writer Maurice Pons, author of the novel Seasons who fell in love with the place and retired there permanently in 1957. “The Suzanne and Maurice duo was created. He brought his friends, young budding filmmakers and they came to residency to write their first screenplays”added Stanislas Lipinsky.
The New Wave is infatuated with the place. François Truffaut, Louis Malle, Alain Cavalier come to write some of their screenplays there. A part of four hundred blows and Jules and Jim are filmed at the Moulin d’Andé. Many writers stay there, the playwright Eugène Ionesco, the poets René Depestre and Richard Wright, the essayist Jean Lacouture, and more recently the novelist Patrick Rambaud. Georges Perec writes there entirely Disappearance.
“Until the end she continued to be president of the association” and for the Mill “a new page will be written, Suzanne leaves a huge void, we have to rewrite the continuity with a new dynamic” and in “philosophy at the mill (…) a place of sharing and useful socially, culturally and humanly”. “He was such a solar character, but it has to continue”added Stanislas Lipinski.