Isidore Isou

Isidore Isou (Botosani, Rumanía, 1925 – Paris, France, 2007) was an eager reader, precociously passionate about the work of the great authors of literature and philosophy. It was while reading a phrase by Keyserling –‘the poet dilates words’ (words translating as vocables in French) –that an error of translation made him mistake the word vocable for vocal, understanding, in his native Romanian, that the poet dilates vocals, which inspired him to write the Letterist Manifesto. He produced more than twenty films and though his artworks are to be found in collections of important institutions he has never been the object of a big retrospective. In the eighties he obtained French nationality, and died in Paris in 2007.