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Hamish Hamilton has secured a “unique” memoir from artist Liliane Lijn, chronicling her life in Paris in the 1960s.
Simon Prosser, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, to Liquid Reflections from Sarah Such at the Sarah Such Literary Agency. It will publish in early 2025.
The publisher said: “The book plunges us straight into the late and post-Surrealist Paris of Breton, the Deux Magots, the Beat poets, the existentialists and the Ecole du Louvre. These are the now-lost worlds in which Liliane Lijn makes her way as an evolving artist, battling structural sexism from the gallery system, from a possessive and dismissive father and from her charismatic, but narcissistic and envious lover, Takis, the celebrated Greek sculptor, many years her elder.”
It continued: “Following marriage to Takis, and a child, her life detours to Athens, New York and elsewhere, but always returning to Paris, until the moment when she throws everything up in the air, moving to London alone, with the promise of a show at white-hot gallery Signals…
“Now a celebrated London-based artist in her 80s, Liliane is finally achieving worldwide recognition for her genre-defying, boundary-leaping, poetically luminous work, with solo and group museum shows and a major retrospective opening next year in Munich.”
Prosser said: “Few great artists are equally great writers, but Liliane Lijn is that rarity. Writing has always been a part of her artistic practice, and she has also kept diaries over many decades. I was electrified when I read this – it brings to illuminated life not just a person but also a lost time and place – the Paris-centric art world of the early to mid-1960s. It is the portrait of the artist as a young woman which I had no idea existed."
Lijn added: “I wrote Liquid Reflections because I wanted to take my readers on the journey I made to become an artist. It’s the story of an idealistic, inspired young woman who refuses to accept the prejudices of her time. Becoming an artist was also a search for my own identity, and as I moved in between Paris, New York, Geneva and Athens, my early years as an artist are revealed.
"I am delighted to be working with Sarah Such Literary Agency. Sarah has carefully guided this book to my ideal editor and publisher and I am overjoyed that my memoir will be published by Simon Prosser on his prestigious list at Hamish Hamilton."