Henri Michaux

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Henri Michaux (born May 24, 1899 in Namur ( Belgium ), † October 19, 1984 in Paris ) was a French-speaking poet and painter . Michaux is considered to be one of the great loners in 20th century art.

Life

Henri Michaux was born into a middle-class family and seems to have had a health and mental unstable childhood in Brussels and in a country home in the village of Grasheide (municipality of Putte ). From the age of 12 he attended a Jesuit- run school. Latin (foreignness in the language, being at home in a foreign language) and music became his first major occupations. His first French school essay was a shock for his teacher as well as for himself: “All the things that cannot be found in his imagination!” The teacher urged him to study literature. In the two years after graduating from school until 1918, during which he was unable to attend university because of the German occupation, he read authors of intellectual borderline situations: Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski , Lev Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy , Ernst Hello , the Flemish mystic Jan van Ruysbroek and legends about life descriptions christian saint.

In 1919 he broke off his medical studies and embarked in 1920 on one of the last deep-sea sailing ships, a five-masted schooner, and later as a sailor on a ten thousand ton truck. Then he returned to Brussels. In 1922 he experienced a revelation: reading the chants of Maldoror von Lautréamont . He started to write. In 1925 he met the paintings of Klee , Ernst and de Chirico , he was enthusiastic. In 1927 he made a trip to Ecuador , after which he moved to Paris. Trips to Anatolia, North Africa, Italy followed. 1930–31 he undertook a long journey to Asia, finally his journey: India, Indonesia, China, Japan. In 1935 he was in Montevideo and Buenos Aires , in 1939 in Brazil . After the Germans invaded Paris in 1940, Michaux moved to Vichy-France . In 1948, his wife died of severe burns after an accident. In 1955 he became a French citizen.

In 1927 Michaux had published his first books, My possessions and A certain Plume . In 1937 Michaux had his first exhibition in the Galerie Pierre in Paris. After the war, he initially turned more to painting. In 1956 he made the first of his mescaline experiments, about which he wrote three important books from 1961. From 1957 he exhibited practically all over the world. He was a participant in documenta 2 in Kassel in 1959 , as well as documenta 3 (1964) and documenta 6 in 1977. He received the Einaudi Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1960 , and in 1965 he was awarded the Grand State Prize for Literature of the Republic of France. which he however turned down.

At first he was close to the surrealists . Michaux became known in the 1960s through books and drawings that emerged from his experiments with mescaline. In the winter of 1963-64 Michaux made his last major and only trip after the Second World War , which took him to India .

Translations into German were made by Paul Celan , among others .

Works

  • Individual works translated into German:
    • Ecuador (Graz 1994, orig. 1929)
    • A barbarian in Asia (Graz 1992, orig. 1933)
    • A certain Plume (Wiesbaden 1960)
    • Journey to Groß-Garabannien (Frankfurt 1986, orig. 1936)
    • In the Land of Magic and Here Poddema (Graz 1996, orig. 1941, 1948)
    • Turbulence in infinity (Frankfurt a. M. 1961, the first mescaline book, orig. 1957)
    • The great stress tests and other disturbance experiences (Frankfurt a. M. 1970, orig. 1966)
    • Unhappy miracle. Mescaline (Munich 1986, orig. 1972)
    • Knowledge through abysses (Graz 1998, orig. 1961)
    • Moments. Crossings of time (Munich 1983, orig. 1973)
    • Corner post (Munich, orig. 1971)
    • Ideograms in China (Graz 1997, orig. 1975)
    • Character. Heads. Gestures (Bern / Vienna 2014, orig. 1972)
  • German-language selection of works:
    • Henri Michaux. Seals (Esslingen 1954)
    • Henri Michaux. Poems and writings , 2 volumes, bilingual (Frankfurt a. M. 1966, 1970)
    • Henri Michaux. I am gong. Poetry and short prose (Leipzig 1991)
  • Other works:
    • La vie intérieure ('The Inner Life', 1927)
    • Vents et Poussières ('Winds and Dust', 1962)
    • Façons d'endormi, façons d'éveillé ('Types of falling asleep, types of waking up', 1969)
    • Emergences - Résurgences (a kind of autobiography of his development as a painter, 1972)
    • Une voie pour l'insubordination ('A Path to Non-Subordination', 1980)
    • Chemins cherchés, chemins perdus - Transgression - Affrontements ('Wanted Paths, Lost Paths. Transgressions - Clash ' ', 1981)
    • Le jardin exalté ('The Carried Garden', 1983)

Exhibitions

Exhibition catalogs (selection)

  • Henri Michaux. Robert Fraser Gallery , London 1963.
  • Henri Michaux. Kestner Society Hanover, Nov. 17, 1972 to Jan. 7, 1973, with notes by Wieland Schmied .
  • Henri Michaux. The pictorial work. Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, Nov. 17, 1993 to Jan. 9, 1994.
  • Michaux. Mescaline. - The mescaline drawings by Henri Michaux. Neue Galerie, Graz, July 10th to August 29th, 1998.

The biography is based e.g. Partly based on a text by Michaux himself: Quelques renseignement sur cinquante-neuf années d'exister ('Some information about fifty-nine years of existence', 1959).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Another edition as Ein Barbar auf Reisen , Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn 1998, series Die Other Bibliothek , ISBN 978-3-8218-4161-8 .
  2. ^ A barbarian on the drawing sheet in FAZ from October 15, 2013, page 33
personal data
SURNAME Michaux, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian-French poet and painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Namur , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1984
Place of death Paris , France