Henri Michaux, a Belgian poet who became a French citizen, is also a renowned painter and illustrator.

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He quickly abandoned his medical studies to become a seaman and then worked in various jobs. It was the discovery of the work of Lautréamont, a Franco-Uruguayan poet, that encouraged him to write. He moved to Paris in 1924, where he published Who I was. An insatiable traveller, he travels through Asia and South America in search of the effects of magic. He sees literature more as a lived experience than a simple representation of his fantasies. Soon, he worked on painting and drawing, which he found more liberating than words.

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“One day I will tear off the anchor that keeps my ship away from the seas.”

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He is one of the painters gathered for the historical exhibition L'Envolée lyrique, Paris 1945-1946, at the Luxembourg Museum (Paris). In 1972, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels devoted a retrospective to him.