Serge CREUZ (1924-1997) L'imbécile de la nuit du premier mai 1948, gouache on paper, signed lower right, 53 x 32 cm. Note: The expression "l'imbécile du premier mai 1948" refers to a famous article by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in Les Temps Modernes, in which he criticised the French Communist Party and certain left-wing intellectuals. In it, he denounced the political recuperation of the demonstrations of 1 May 1948 and the ideological blindness of certain militants or sympathisers towards Soviet excesses. In this text, the "imbecile" is not a real person but a symbolic figure, a figure of the dogmatic intellectual or activist who no longer thinks critically and is content to follow the party line.