Vali Myers (AUS, 1930 – 2003) – Art by Women

Vali Myers (2 August 1930 – 12 February 2003) 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.

Myers was born in Canterbury, Sydney, on 2 August 1930, to a violinist mother and marine wireless operator father. She displayed a talent for art at an early age. The family moved to Box Hill, Melbourne in 1941 and Myers left home at 14.

After working in factories to support her dance lessons, she became immersed in dance and later became the leading dancer for the Melbourne Modern Ballet Company.

Vali Myers photographed by N. Ikin in c.1959 in Wolfgang Sievers studio in Collins Street Melbourne (via W)

In 1949 at age 19 Myers travelled to impoverished post-war Paris to pursue a dance career but found herself living on the streets of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés Quarter on the Left Bank. Love on the Left Bank is a 1954 book of photographs from Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken (1925–1990), documenting the bohemian life on the Rive Gauche of Paris; Myers is the heroine of this semi-biographical roman à clef, and is also photographed along with some of her early drawings. via Wikipedia