“Wave Over Wave” is the sea, or the Ocean. You can say it and you can do it. In my last performance in 1982 I swam for 5 days in the swimming pool of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2, travelling on the route between London and New York. But you can also do it on paper with a pen or a pencil, wave over wave, and after a while, when your hand gets tired of repeating the same gesture over and over again, there appears a tight-knit mesh, which almost looks like the sea seen from above. Anyone can do it. Before the “Crossing”, I used to sell these drawings in New York, at a small price, just to survive and advertise my forthcoming swimming project.
(Bulgaria, 1940) Lives and works in Milan, Italy
Alzek Misheff graduated in painting in 1966 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. In 1971 he left Bulgaria and walked all the way to Italy, where he currently lives and works in Milan. He is well known in the international art world for the project Swimming Across The Atlantic, which was performed in the swimming pool of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1982, while travelling on the route between London and New York. In the book Europa-America – The different avant-gardes, Achille Bonito Oliva numbers him among the thirty most significant artists in Europe.