Vali Myers, the Witch of Positano

Vali Myers, widely known as the “Witch of Positano,” was a visionary Australian artist, professional dancer, and iconic bohemian mystic. Born in Sydney in 1930, she lived an uncompromising, boundary-pushing life that spanned the post-war avant-garde scene of Paris, the iconic Chelsea Hotel in New York, and a remote canyon in southern Italy. With her striking shock of red hair, facial tattoos, kohl-lined eyes, and gold teeth, she was a muse to cultural giants and a pioneer of the eco-spiritual counterculture.

After leaving home young to become the lead dancer of the Melbourne Modern Ballet Company, she boarded a ship to Paris at age 19. There, she lived in post-war poverty on the Left Bank, becoming a prominent face of the Beatnik generation. Photographed extensively by Ed van der Elsken for his seminal book Love on the Left Bank, she was embedded in circles with Jean Cocteau, Allen Ginsberg, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

To break an opium addiction, Myers retreated with her partner Rudi Rappold to Il Porto, a wild, deep ravine on a cliffside near Positano, Italy. They inhabited an abandoned, centuries-old stone structure lacking electricity or running water. For decades, she lived entirely attuned to nature, drawing obsessively, creating her own spiritual language, and operating a wildlife sanctuary for rescued foxes, owls, and dogs. Her fierce protection of the valley ultimately led to it being secured as a WWF-protected oasis.

Myers occasionally re-emerged into high-society art hubs. During her time at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, she became close friends with icons like Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, and Patti Smith (famously tattooing a signature lightning bolt onto Smith's knee).

Later in life, she returned to Melbourne, opening a bustling studio and continuing to exhibit her work internationally until her passing from stomach cancer in 2003.

Myers’ artwork consisted of highly intricate, obsessive pen-and-ink and watercolor drawings. Often channeling mystical trances, her pieces depicted primordial magic, animal forms, and raw, powerful representations of femininity. Her singular aura was immortalized in underground cinema, most notably the intimate 1967 experimental documentary Vali: The Witch of Positano directed by Sheldon Rochlin and Flame Schon, which captures her dancing, tending to her menagerie, and working out of her dream-filled “black book.”