'La Retour de la Colonne Durutti'.
André Bertrand was a mid-20th century French activist, who made a four-page socially conscious comic strip 'La Retour de la Colonne Durutti' (1966), which was distributed as a pamphlet at the University of Strasbourg. It gained more notability during the late 1960s student demonstrations, particularly of May 1968. Virtually nothing else is known about the identity of this mysterious artist.
La Retour de la Colonne Durutti
In the mid-1960s, Bertrand worked with student activists in Strasbourg, and probably was a follower of the Situationist International movement. His 4-page comic strip, 'La Retour de la Colonne Durutti' ('The Return of the Durutti Column', 1966), was handed out at Strasbourg University on 26 October 1966, during a student protest at the opening of the school year. It was a companion piece to Mustapha Khayati's pamphlet 'On the Poverty of Student Life'. 'La Retour de la Colonne Durutti' later became a standard work, circulating again during the May 1968 student protests in France.
The Durutti Column referred to the anarchist military unit established during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). In Bertrand's comic, existing powers were under attack and leftist student protest was voiced. It was made with the "détournement" technique. This was a process of using and contorting images, often well-known drawings and pictures, by adding text balloons and inventing completely new graphic stories around them.
'La Retour de la Colonne Durutti'.
British appearance
In 1967 or 1968, André Bertrand most likely made another titleless comic strip, which dealt with the philosophy of the Belgian writer Raoul Vaneigem that the "only free choice is the refusal to pay". Instead of photo collages, Bertrand traced photographs to create photo-realistic drawings. To heighten the socialist-anarchist revolutionary spirit, he used a lot of red. The comic was also translated into English and, between 16 and 29 February 1968, appeared on the cover of the International Times, A.K.A. It Magazine. However, the editors accidentally misspelled his name as "André Bertram". The presumably original French publication is unknown.
Legacy and influence
In 1978, an anarchist punk band, The Durutti Column, used the frame with the two cowboys from Bertrand's comic strip for their debut album 'The Return of the Durutti Column' (1980), also named after Bertrand's comic. They used the same image on promotional flyers.
English-language version of Bertrand's 1967 comic strip adaptation of a text by Raoul Vaneigem, printed on the front page of The International Times, credited to "André Bertram".