Pierre Delattre

Pierre Delattre was a prominent figure in the Beat movement, later known for spirituality-infused novels and paintings.

In the late 1950s, Delattre was a minister leading the Bread and Wine Mission, a coffeehouse in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood that became a hub for poets, musicians and other artists. Delattre would later leave the clergy and immerse himself in Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies, which informed his first novel in 1971--"Tales of a Dalai Lama,"--as well as four later novels and a 1993 memoir, "Episodes."

Delattre's art was also shaped by a series of other jobs, including railroad switchman, cab driver, film maker, magazine contributor and teacher at levels from first grade to graduate school. A writer throughout, he began to make his living from painting in 1990 after arriving in northern New Mexico.