Alain Arias-misson Biography
Alain Arias-Misson (1936 - ) born in Brussels in 1936, Arias-Misson was four years old when his family left Europe for New York; he returned to Belgium after the war at the age of thirteen where he studied for three years, a period which imbued him with classical culture. The remainder of his education was in the United States in New England, graduating from Harvard University with a degree in Greek and French literature. He left for Algeria, where he taught during the first year of the Revolution. Shortly thereafter he settled in Spain in 1963, where he helped create Spain's experimental poetry movement in the 1960s with Spanish friends Joan Brossa, Ignacio Gomez de Liaño, Herminio Molero and others. In 1967 he visited Belgium where he worked closely with the concrete poet Paul De Vree and co-edited his review, De Tafelrunde in Antwerp; he also collaborated with the avant-garde magazines Phantomas and L'VII in Brussels. In Belgium he devised his first "Public Poems" - a way of "writing on the street like a page". He frequently exhibited in avant-garde galleries in Belgium and the Netherlands, culminating in the major Concrete Poetry exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1972. In the same period he worked closely with the Lotta Poetica group in Italy, with exhibition scores across Europe (Documenta), Japan and South America. In 1975-76 he returned to New York for several years where he exhibited at the Emily Harvey Gallery and published several novels and critical articles on literature and the arts. In 1998 he returned to Europe to Venice and Paris, where he exhibited regularly at the Lara Vincy Galerie in Paris and in various venues in Spain, Germany, Italy and Belgium.
