Writer and Painter Brion Gysin at Peace Eye Bookstore in NYC

NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 1965: English writer, poet, and painter Brion Gysin (John Clifford Brian Gysin - January 19, 1916 - July 13, 1986) poses for a portrait in February, 1965 while attending the opening party for the Peace Eye Bookstore on 10th Street and Avenue C on the Lower East Side in New York City, New York. As an artist and writer, Brion Gysin's associations with the Surrealist Group in Paris in the late 1930s and 40s, including as amenuensis to writer Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, and confrontations with Andre Breton over Gysin's homosexuality, a stint with the U.S. Army during World War II, his expatriation to Morocco where he met and convened with writers Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs, and to Paris again in the late 1950s where he lived at 9 Rue Gît-le-Cur in the Latin Quarter, the infamous 'Beat Hotel' where Gysin, Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and other 'Beat'-identified writer, poets, and artists spent time creating, writing and painting in the bare but affordable hostel.The Peace Eye Bookstore, run by writer, poet, and musician Ed Sanders on the site of a former kosher meat market on NYC's Lower East Side, was a vital hub of countercultural and experimental publications and performance from 1965 thru 1968. ((Photo by David Gahr/Getty Images)