Rare Original Michel Mockers (France 1922 - ) Drawing in Pencil On heavy cardboard mounted on border. Some spotting (needs professional attention) and a light wave from humidity. Michel Mockers art does not come up for sale often. Very beautiful. Midcentury Unframed Image: 21" x 29" With Border: 26" x 34" Michel Mockers is an artist - painter, sculptor, writer, and video producer. Michel was born in Nantes France in 1922, and grew up in both Paris and the South of France, before he moved to the USA. His paintings are displayed in both the USA and Europe. He has two books in the Library of Congress in French. He is the last survivor of the WW II French Resistance against Nazi Germany. Now 100 years old, in his famous book, "Rene?s War: Memoirs of French Resistance in WWII" Mockers provides a riveting firsthand account of his role fighting the Nazi occupation of France from 1941 to 1944, in this story of courage, love, and coming of age in the midst of war. In the course of the book, he grows from an idle young 19-year-old student artist (who used the alias Rene) to a hardened senior leader of the Resistance at the age of 23. He leads the reader from one dangerous encounter with Nazis to another, and the book, with its excellent pacing, reads like a great spy thriller. Aside from the author, the most intriguing figures are three women who play key roles: Marika, a zealous German spy attempting to trap members of the resistance; Mary, a British Commando team leader coordinating Resistance activity; and Michelle, a French messenger who travels over German-controlled roads on her bike to coordinate the activities of different resistance bands. Michelle in particular is a heroine the reader will never forget. Mockers?s narrative holds the potential to become a classic antiwar war memoir, and it is a must-read for anyone inspired by the courage and determination of young people who take a stand against aggression in a dangerous and chaotic world. His father was a successful director of casinos, both in Nantes and Cannes, so Michel had a positive childhood. He attended school at the Abbaye de Calcat, where he received an excellent education, and as a teenager he was even learning to fly an airplane. In that respect he was following in his father?s footsteps as his father had been a gunner in the Great War, with a friend who was a pilot. But when the news of war came in 1939, Michel remembers that they and the men of his own generation were devastated by the news. France was invaded in 1940, and on his father?s advice Michel fled to the south, where he worked on a farm for a year. The country was at this time divided into the two zones ? Occupied and Vichy ? and Michel recalls that it was difficult to know whom to trust. He spent time with the Chantiers de Jeunesse, but the authorities were looking to send young men to Germany to work in factories ? and Michel was on their list. The young Michel made a fateful decision at this time: that he would resist the German occupation. He and his brother made a fateful coin flip: both would resist but one in France and one outside the country. Michel was the one to stay, and he escaped that area and went north and created his own local resistance cell and began to think of ways to fight back. A local priest and other connections and a bit of luck enabled Michel to learn of a British mission in the area, and weapons were dropped to Michel and his men from a British aircraft. Michel and many of the others had little experience or military training, so they had to learn how to use the weapons themselves. They worked in the shadows, and when the news of D-day came to them, they took their fight into the open, joining with the Allied soldiers in the liberation of France. Michel was a de facto officer during this entire time, so with the end of the war he was made a lieutenant in the regular French army, even though he had no specialized training. After the war Michel was able to return to his studies, and he continued to develop his interest in the arts. BTC ETH XRP XLM DOGE LTC