Young hero of French Resistance later became a distinguished collector of art

Daniel Cordier, who has died aged 100, was approaching his 20th birthday when Germany invaded his homeland in June 1940. He sat at home in Bordeaux, in the southwest of France, listening to Marshal Philippe Petain’s radio broadcast urging the army to surrender.

‘‘As my mother collapsed into my stepfather’s arms, I raced upstairs and flung myself on my bed, and I sobbed,’’ he told the BBC in 2018. ‘‘But then, it must have been half an hour or so later, I suddenly drew myself up, and I said to myself, ‘But no, this is ridiculous. Petain is just a stupid old fool. We have to do something.’ But what? I did not know.’’

At first Cordier distributed pamphlets denouncing

Petain, but as

German troops advanced south he headed for

London, where he joined the

Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle. ‘‘This immense figure appeared in the doorway, and he had to stoop in order to get through without knocking off his kepi,’’ said Cordier. ‘‘I will never forget his first words, ’Gentlemen, I will not congratulate you for having come here. You have merely done your duty.’ Not a word of encouragement. I thought it was an extraordinary thing to say.’’

After military training Cordier was selected to join the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Action (BCRA), the secret services of the Free French Forces, where he spent a year being trained in sabotage, radio transmission and airdrops. In July 1942, armed only with a revolver and a knife, he was parachuted behind German lines. He landed in a gorse bush and made his way to Lyon.

His mission was to become secretary to Georges Bidault, head of the underground press agency, but before long he had met a contact known as Rex, who was working to create a united front among the disparate Resistance groups. Rex took a shine to Cordier, inviting him to be his personal assistant. Later he learnt that Rex was Jean Moulin, a debonair collector of fine art who had also been parachuted into occupied France, where he was effectively De Gaulle’s representative.

Although their views about French politics differed, the pair became close. As the Germans closed in on the Resistance, Moulin bolstered their cover by opening the Galerie Romanin in Nice, exhibiting not only his own works but also those by Edgar Degas, Raoul Dufy and Henri Matisse.

In June 1943, Moulin was betrayed to the Nazis. He was tortured, and died on the train taking him to Germany. Cordier continued to rally and organise Resistance fighters. Finally he fled to Pamplona, in northern Spain, where he was arrested and interned. In May 1944 he was transferred back to London, where he continued to work for the BCRA and learnt of Rex’s true identity.

He was born Daniel Bouyjou in 1920, the son of a wealthy coffee merchant from whom he inherited a love of classical music. His parents divorced in 1925 and, although his father won custody of young Daniel, he rarely saw his son, instead placing him in a strict boarding establishment run by Dominican monks.

Leaving school in 1937, he promptly abandoned all religion and went to live in the Pyrenees with his mother, who had married Charles Cordier, an industrialist with an interest in cars and right-wing politics, whose surname he later adopted.

After the war Cordier studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, where he developed an interest in abstract art. By the early 1950s he was creating reliefs composed of shapes cut from thick plywood, glued, superimposed, coated, sanded and then covered with bright colours. ‘‘A work of art is not to ease but to awaken and hassle the mind,’’ he once declared.

In November 1956 he opened the Galerie Daniel Cordier in Paris. The following year, at the height of the Cold War, he made international headlines by displaying 10 abstract paintings that had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union, where they had been banned. He opened a gallery in Frankfurt in

1958 and another in 1960 on Madison Ave, New York, but closed them all in 1964.

Thereafter he managed his extensive collection of abstract art. Over the years he donated more than 500 works to the Centre Pompidou museum. In 2018 his remaining 400 works were sold at Sotheby’s in Paris, fetching more than €4 million.

In retirement he lived in an apartment in Cannes, surrounded by disorderly piles of art books. In a memoir, Alias Caracalla, published in 2009, he revealed that he was gay, adding that it would have been ‘‘utterly unthinkable’’ to say so when he was young. He received the Grand Croix of the Legion d’honneur, the highest French decoration, in

2018 and in July he was appointed honorary MBE by the British government.

His death leaves Hubert Germain as the sole survivor of the 1038 men and women who received the title Compagnons de la Liberation for their role in the liberation of France. –

‘‘A work of art is not to ease but to awaken and hassle the mind.’’

Daniel Cordier