The Salon of May is founded in Paris, in a coffee of the place of the Palais Royal, in October 1943 during the Occupation, in opposition to the ideology of the Nazisme and to its judgment of the degenerated Art, by the art critic Gaston Diehl and the painters, sculptors or engravers Henri-Georges Adam, Emmanuel Auricoste, Lucien Coutaud, Robert Couturier, Jacques Despierre (which suggests naming the living room of the name of the month during which the first meetings were held), Marcel Gili, Leon Gischia , Francis Gruber, Jean Moal, Alfred Manessier, Andre Marchand, Edouard Pinion, Gustave Singier, Claude Venard and Roger Old man, which composes its management committee. Several of them (Coutaud, Gischia, Moal, Manessier, Merchant, Pinion, Singier) had in 1941 taken part in the exposure of the " Twenty young painters of French tradition ".

With in the chair Gaston Diehl the first Living room of May takes place to the gallery Pierre Maurs (3, avenue Matignon) of the May 29th to the June 29th 1945. The committee of honor joins together Germain Bazin, Jacques Dupont, Rene Huyghe, Bernard Dorival, Michel Florisoone, Pierre Ladoué and Marc Thiboutet. The legal council is Jean Follain. The catalog of this first Living room is prefaced by Gaston Diehl, with texts of Rene Bertelé and André Roland de Renéville, poems of Jacques Prévert, Lucien Becker, André Frénaud, Jean Follain and Guillevic.

Gaston Diehl will remain the president of the Living room of May until in 1997.

Selective bibliography

• Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, History of art, Paris 1940-1944, National order, Traditions and Modernities , foreword of Michel Winock, Publications of the Sorbonne, Paris, 1986.
• Gaston Diehl, Painting in France in the black years, 1935-1945 , Z' editions, Nice, 1999.

External bond

• Site of the Living room of May