AlzekMisheff
Biography
Alzek Misheff (1940, Dupnitsa, Bulgaria) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends painting, performance, music, and conceptual practice. A unique figure in European contemporary art, Misheff has spent decades exploring the relationship between body, sound, and public space through immersive and often theatrical interventions. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, graduating in 1966. In 1971, he relocated to Italy, where he became part of the postwar experimental art scene, establishing himself in Milan. His early performances in the 1970s challenged traditional boundaries between disciplines. One of his most iconic projects, Music from the Sky (1979), transformed Milan’s Piazza del Duomo into a large-scale sound and visual environment using helium balloons as sound carriers—blending installation, live action, and public engagement. Another seminal work, Swimming Across the Atlantic (1982), was a five-day endurance performance staged in the swimming pool aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 during its voyage from London to New York. Misheff swam each day in a symbolic gesture that combined physical effort with conceptual exploration—collapsing distances between continents and artistic categories. In the mid-1980s, he created 500 Young Faces, a public portrait project installed across urban spaces in Italy and France, engaging with themes of individuality, visibility, and collectivity—decades before the rise of digital identity culture. Misheff has been featured in several editions of the Venice Biennale, including in 2000 and 2007, where he presented hybrid performances that combined music, drawing, and homage, such as Chalk Portrait Music of Joseph Beuys. His work often pays tribute to avant-garde figures while continuing to question the place of the artist in society. In 2021, a major retrospective titled Acqui – Milan – Sofia was held at the National Gallery in Sofia, presenting more than 140 pieces that spanned the full arc of his career—from early drawings to immersive installations and multimedia works. Now based in Milan, Misheff remains active in the international art scene, continuing to invent and reimagine forms that dissolve the borders between action, image, and experience.
