"As for living creatures and things, who has not wished to get a fuller, better, different grasp on them, not with words, not with phonemes or onomatopoeias, but with graphic signs?"

In painting, Henri Michaux discovered a medium that freed him from words, in which he could experiment with a new language that allowed him to express his inner world in a more direct and spontaneous manner. As a result, Michaux’s paintings were quick and dynamic.

To that end, he worked mainly with highly liquid mediums, such as ink and watercolor, which gave him greater speed of movement. He created compositions full of rhythm, gesture, and signs that often represent recognizable figures such as people or animals, as well as abstract forms he created based on his memories of the altered states of consciousness he had experimented.