Altmann was born in Havana in 1942. His father was a collector, editor and banker of Jewish origins who fled his birth country Germany and settled in Cuba in 1941. Roberto Altmann spent his childhood among the Cuban art circles, before the family moved to New York and then Vaduz in Liechtenstein.


In 1962 he exhibited his paintings in Paris, where he came in touch with the Romanian-born poet and author Isidore Isou, who had founded the avant-gardistic Lettrism movement in France shortly after World War II. Lettrists were dedicated to establish a new surreal norm for all forms of art. The basic thought was that common narrative prose and pictorial expressions had worn out, and it was time for a new aesthetic. The lettrists felt that the Letter should form the basis for this synthesis between visual arts and writing. It seeped through in prose, poetry, music, film, dance, sculpting and... comics. Altmann participated in the group's magazines, exhibitions and other activities, including the founding of the magazine Ô in 1962.
Roberto Altmann left the Lettrism movement in 1969. From 1971 he published Apeïros, an "utopian aperiodic", devoted to letters and symbols. He made engravings at the Lacourière-Frélaut workshop in Paris, and was appointed director of the Vaduz Center for Art and Communication, built by Cuban architect Ricardo Porro. For this institution he acquired the archives of American writer and visual artist. William Burroughs, which have since been transferred to the New York Public Library. He exhibited his own artworks in both Liechtenstein and the USA, and continues to participate in several artistic projects, including the foundation of the Magenta group with Judith Brouste and Pierre Weiss in 2004.




Sources include:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/a/altmann_roberto.htm