Roland Topor facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Roland Topor
Born	(1938-01-07)7 January 1938 Paris, France
Died	16 April 1997(1997-04-16) (aged 59) Paris, France
Occupation	Illustrator, cartoonist, painter, playwright, designer, painter, animator, fiction writer, actor, film and TV script writer
Period	1964–1997
Genre	Satire, Surrealism
Literary movement	Panic Movement
Notable works	The Tenant

Roland Topor (born January 7, 1938 – died April 16, 1997) was a French artist. He was known for many things! He was an illustrator, cartoonist, painter, and writer. He also wrote for movies and TV, and even acted. His work often had a surreal style, which means it was dreamlike and sometimes strange.

Roland Topor's family was Polish-Jewish. His parents were refugees from Warsaw, a city in Poland. When he was very young, his family hid him in a place called Savoy. They did this to keep him safe from the Gestapo, who were a secret police force during World War II.

Roland Topor's Early Life

Roland Topor's parents moved to France in the 1930s. In 1941, during World War II, many Jewish men in Paris had to register with the authorities. Roland's father, Abram, was one of them.

Abram was arrested and sent to a prison camp. This camp was a place where people were held before being sent to other, more dangerous camps. Luckily, Abram managed to escape from the camp. He then hid in an area south of Paris.

While his father was hiding, Roland and his older sister, Hélène d'Almeida-Topor, faced a difficult situation. Their landlady tried to trick them into telling her where their father was. But the children were brave and did not tell her anything.

In May 1941, a neighbor warned the Topor family. The French police and the Gestapo were going to search their building. So, the family quickly fled to a safer part of France. Four-year-old Roland was placed with a French family. He was given a false name and pretended to be a Catholic schoolboy. This helped keep him safe.

The Topor family survived the war. In 1946, they went to court to get their belongings back. They also wanted to live in their old apartment again. The court agreed with them. They moved back and even paid rent to the same landlady who had tried to harm them before.

Topor's Art and Style

Roland Topor is perhaps most famous for his drawings and illustrations. His art often had a unique, surreal sense of humor. He studied art at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

You could find his amazing artworks in many places. They appeared in books, newspapers, and on posters. He also created art for animated films. His detailed and realistic drawing style made the fantastic and sometimes dark subjects of his images stand out even more.

Topor's Books

Roland Topor wrote several books, but not many of them are available in English. His stories are sometimes called "post-surrealist horror."

One of his most famous novels is The Tenant (originally called Le Locataire chimérique). He wrote it in 1964. This book was later made into a movie in 1976 by the director Roman Polanski. The Tenant tells the story of a man in Paris. He becomes very curious about what happened to the person who lived in his apartment before him.

In 1969, Topor wrote another novel called Joko's Anniversary. This story is like a fable, which is a short tale with a moral lesson. It's about losing your identity and makes fun of how people try to fit in. Topor explored similar ideas in his later book, Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne (1978).

A new version of The Tenant was released in 2006. It included Topor's original novel, some of his short stories, and examples of his artwork. In 2018, Head-to-Toe Portrait of Suzanne was translated into English. It was the first of his novels to be translated in almost 50 years!

Topor's Music and Films

Roland Topor also wrote two songs for a singer named Megumi Satsu. The songs were called "Je m'aime" and "Monte dans mon Ambulance."

He was also involved in making animated films with René Laloux. They created "The Dead Times" (1964) and "The Snails" (1965). Their most well-known animated film is the full-length movie La Planète sauvage, which came out in 1973.

Topor was an actor too! He played the character Renfield in Werner Herzog's movie Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). In the same year, he acted in the movie Ratataplan. In that film, he played a strange, paralyzed boss.

Topor's Theatre Work

Roland Topor wrote, directed, and designed many plays for the theatre.

Some of his plays include:

• 1972 – The Last Lonely Days of Robinson Crusoe
• 1972 – Monsieur Laurent’s Baby
• 1975 – From Moses to Mao, 5000 Adventurous Years
• 1983 – Battles (written with Jean-Michel Ribes)
• 1989 – Joko Celebrates his Birthday
• 1989 – Vinci was Right
• 1994 – Winter Under the Table
• 1996 – Ambiguity

Key Moments in Topor's Career

• 1962: Roland Topor helped start the Panic Movement. This was a group of artists who explored dark humor and absurd ideas. He formed it with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal.
• 1961-1965: He contributed his drawings to a French satirical magazine called Hara-Kiri.
• 1965: He created the animated short film Les Escargots ("The Snails") with René Laloux. This film won a special award at the Cracow Film Festival.
• 1971: He drew the strange introduction for Fernando Arrabal's film Viva la muerte.
• 1973: Topor designed the animated film La Planète sauvage, which was directed by René Laloux. It was based on a novel by Stefan Wul.
• 1976: Roman Polanski directed a movie based on Topor's book The Tenant.
• 1979: Topor played the character Renfield in Werner Herzog's film Nosferatu the Vampyre.
• 1983: He created the popular French TV series Téléchat with Henri Xhonneux. It was a funny parody of news broadcasts using puppets of a cat and an ostrich.
• 1989: He co-wrote the screenplay for the film Marquis with Henri Xhonneux. This movie was loosely based on the life of Marquis de Sade.
• 2011: An art museum in Australia, the Ian Potter Museum of Art, held an exhibition. It showed 22 promotional posters designed by Roland Topor.

See also

In Spanish: Roland Topor para niños