Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat

Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat
Saint-Léonard Church Saint-Léonard Church
Coat of arms of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat Coat of arms
Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat
Location within Limousin region Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat
Coordinates:
Country	France
Region	Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes
Department	Haute-Vienne
Arrondissement	Limoges
Canton	Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat
Intercommunality	Noblat
Government
• Mayor (2008–2014)	Christine Riffaud
Area1	55.59 km2 (21.46 sq mi)
Population (2006)2	4,757
• Density	86/km2 (220/sq mi)
INSEE/Postal code	87161 / 87400
Elevation	250–444 m (820–1,457 ft) (avg. 330 m or 1,080 ft)
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. 2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat (Occitan: Sent Liunard) is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Limousin region in west-central France, on a hill above the river Vienne. It is named after Saint Leonard of Noblac.

Demographics

Inhabitants are known as Miaulétous.

Sights

Saint-Léonard church is a UNESCO World Heritage Site part of the World Heritage Sites of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. Lajoumard, administratively part of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, is one of the oldest villages in Limousin.

Notable people

Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat is the hometown of the chemist and physicist, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac.

Adrien Pressemane, a porcelain painter, lived in the town and represented the district in parliament.

Raymond Poulidor, considered the most popular racing cyclist in France, lives in the town. He was known as "the eternal second" of the Tour de France after repeatedly losing, often against Jacques Anquetil, who won five times. Poulidor later competed against Eddy Merckx, who also won five times. Poulidor's best victory was in Milan-Sanremo.

The painter Jean-Joseph Sanfourche lived in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat beginning in 1975. He was a prominent figure in art brut.

Born June 25, 1929, in Bordeaux, he lived his early years in Rochefort (Charente-Maritime), where his father, Arthur, taught him the basics of drawing and painting. This father-resistant, was shot by the Germans. The family then leaves to take refuge in Limoges, where the young boy learns wood sculpture and industrial design to professional National School.

Jean-Joseph Sanfourche, begins to paint, despite an eye disease that cripples the irreversible, but he did make an important meeting at Ivry hospital, that of the writer Antonin Artaud.

I'm not an artist, but a man who makes things on the edge of the art and magic of the caves, "said Jean Joseph himself Sanfourche this singular figure who converses with stones, believed very humor and fervor mixed with the power of talismans, and loves to paint on pieces of bone and flint ... This old half-blind recluse has exhibited in Japan, Switzerland, America and Germany, and Unesco has even recently screened a film retrospective of this strange life, halfway between the artist, the child and the shaman film called "I, Sanfourche."

Serge Gainsbourg (Lucien Ginzburg) (1928-1991), took refuge a few months during the year 1944 to the local high school, thereby escaping the persecution of Jews (his parents had immigrated from Crimea) . A comprehensive article on this stay appears in the journal "Memory of Here" (No. 3). His presence in Saint Léonard - it lasted about 6 months - has long been ignored, to the point of creating a controversy about a street name (2001). Only the Press House now called the singer. The debate is closed, since the arrival of Serge Saint Léonard has been proven by several witnesses.

Gilles Deleuze, French philosopher, lived and is buried there.

See also

• Communes of the Haute-Vienne department

References

• INSEE