Pierre Alechinsky (19 October 1927), Belgian painter, draftsman, printmaker, film maker.
After studying book illustration and typography at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture et des Arts Decoratifs, between 1944 - 1946, he became in 1947 a member of Jeune Peinture Belge group. He had his first solo exhibition in the same year Galerie Lou Cosyn in Brussels. Two years later he was one of the founding members of the CoBrA movement.
Together with a group of artists and friends he set up a meeting-place in Brussels and named it Ateliers du Marais. He went to Paris in 1951, but in 1955 he left for Japan, deciding he wanted to study Oriental caligraphy. He even made a movie dedicated to this ancient art, titled Calligraphie japonaise (1956). Alechinsky soon adopted the Japanese manner of painting, puting his paper on the floor, and thus his style gained more freedom. In 1957 he started making large compositions on paper, using Indian ink.