Henri Michaux

His poetic works have often been republished in France, where they are studied along with significant poets of French literature. In 1955 he became a citizen of France, and he lived the rest of his life there. He became a friend of Romanian pessimist philosopher Emil Cioran around the same time, along with other literary luminaries in France. In 1965 he won the grand prix national des Lettres, which he refused to accept, as he did every honor he was accorded in his life.

Biography

Travels

In 1930 and 1931, Michaux visited Japan, China and India. The result of this trip was the book A Barbarian in Asia. Asian culture became one of his biggest influences. The philosophy of Buddhism and calligraphy later became principal subjects of many of his poems and inspired many of his drawings. He also visited Ecuador and published a travelogue book of the same name. His travels across the Americas finished in Brazil in 1939, and he stayed there for two years.

Visual arts

Michaux was a visual artist of some originality, associated with the Tachiste movement in the 1940s and 50s, although that describes only a small part of his artistic achievement—for example, his hallucinatory representations of faces and heads. His work often makes use of dense, suggestively gestural strokes that incorporate elements of calligraphy, asemic writing, and abstract expressionism. The Museum of Modern Art in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in New York both had shows of his work in 1978.