century. However, it obscured the academic art of the second half of the 19th century. In 1904, he entered the honorary committee of the Salon d'Automne and organized several exhibitions for them. In Les Constructeurs (1914), he examined the role of artists in society and the influence of thinkers like Michelet and Nietzsche. Participation in the First World War He was drafted as a military doctor at the front line during the First World War. He was quickly traumatized by the fighting, left to the rear of the battlefield, and was diagnosed with neurasthenia. He was back at the front for the Battle of the Somme as a doctor. In The Holy Face, published in 1918, he described the 'ideas war aroused in him'. The first part of the book "Near the fire" written between May and July 1916 retraces his time as a frontline doctor from August 1914 to August 1915. The second part, “Far from the fire”, evokes his convalescence in Paris and Côte d'Azur, with a visit to Paul Cézanne. The third part, "Under fire", was written in the Somme between August and December 1916. The Interwar period Once demobilized, he resumed writing and travelling. He also took interest in cinema, philosophy and history as with his writing a biography on Napoleon, published in 1921. In 1931 he traveled the world, during which he met the painter Diego Rivera in Mexico, discovered the United States, Japan, China, India and Egypt. Élie Faure, worried about the rise of fascism during the 1930s, joined the committee of anti-fascist intellectuals after the anti-parliamentarist street protests in Paris organized by far-right leagues on the 6 February 1934 crisis. He supported the Republicans against Franco during the Spanish Civil War and visited combatants in Barcelona and Madrid. In 1936, he became co-chairman of the Committee for Aid to the Spanish People. At the beginning of 1937, he launched an appeal to Léon Blum in favor of Spain. He also signed a petition in favor of Spain in the newspaper l'Humanité in October 1937. His testimonies on the war in Spain were published after his death in Meditations catastrophiques. He died of a heart attack in Paris on 29 October 1937. He was buried in his family cemetery in the village of Laurents in Saint-Antoine-de-Breuilh. Friendship Elie Faure was devoted to painter Chaïm Soutine whom he considered a genius. From 1927 onwards, he