1. Vali Myers was an Australian artist, dancer, bohemian and muse whose coverage by the media was mostly in 1950s and 1960s in Europe and the United States.
11 Facts About Vali Myers
1. 2.
Vali Myers displayed a talent for art at an early age.
3.
The family moved to Box Hill, Melbourne in 1941 and Vali Myers left home at 14.
4.
In 1949 at age 19 Vali Myers travelled to impoverished post-war Paris to pursue a dance career but found herself living on the streets of the Saint-Germain-des-Pres Quarter on the Left Bank.
5.
Love on the Left Bank is a 1954 book of photographs from Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken, documenting the bohemian life on the Rive Gauche of Paris; Vali Myers is the heroine of this semi-biographical roman a clef, and is photographed along with some of her early drawings.
6.
Vali Myers was a flamboyant fantasy artist who worked in pen and ink and watercolour as well as being a nightclub dancer.
7.
Vali Myers divided her life between her adopted home of Melbourne, the Hotel Chelsea in New York City, a 14th-century cottage at Il Porto, near Positano and a residence in Paris.
8.
Vali Myers was acquainted with many celebrities including Tennessee Williams, Salvador Dali, Django Reinhardt, Jean Cocteau, Patti Smith, Jean Genet and Sam Shepard.
9.
Vali Myers' paintings have sold for up to $US40,000 in New York.
10.
Vali Myers's work was held in the Stuyvesant collection in the Netherlands, New York's Hurryman Collection, and is owned by private collectors such as George Plimpton and Mick Jagger.
11.
Vali Myers died in Melbourne on 12 February 2003 shortly after being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 72.