In 1927, the Belgian artist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) took a journey to the Far East, travelling to Japan, China and India. On his return he published the book A Barbarian in Asia (Un Barbare en Asie) – a humorous description of the collision of different cultures and spiritualities. The exhibition A Barbarian in Kraków: Henri Michaux at the Manggha Museum presents one of the most original artists of the 20th century: draughtsman, painter fascinated by surrealism and writer. Inspired by Japanese and Chinese art and calligraphy, his drawings and paintings are described as l’art autre – a variation of abstract expressionism. Regarded as a tireless scholar of our inner lives, the artist said he “wanted to draw the consciousness of existence and the flow of time as one take.”
The exhibition, prepared jointly with the Henri Michaux Archives in Paris and the Parisian galleries Thessa Herold and Lelong, focuses on the artist’s relationship with the Far East. We’ll be able to see over a hundred paintings and drawings made using Chinese ink on Japanese and Korean paper, as well as a selection of books, monographs and catalogues and the score and album Three Poems by Henri Michaux by Witold Lutosławski. (dd)
