Eugenio Miccini was born in Florence on June 23, 1925.

Destined by his family for the priesthood, he spent his early years in boarding school and seminary, where he pursued classical studies and developed a strong interest in Latin literature and Greek philosophy. At the age of eighteen, he left the seminary following a religious crisis and enlisted in the war, soon deserting to join the partisan resistance.

After the difficult postwar years, he enrolled at university, where he continued to cultivate his philosophical interests by attending Giulio Preti’s courses on Hegel, Marx, Dewey, and Neo-Positivism. Preti’s books—Praxis and Empiricism, Ordinary Language and Scientific Languages, and Rhetoric and Logic—were fundamental to his logical-philosophical formation. He eventually graduated in Pedagogy alongside Lamberto Borghi.

Having begun to focus on creative writing and essays, he won the "City of Florence Poetry Prize" in 1961, awarded by Mario Luzi. This marked the beginning of an intense period of literary activity, during which he became close to Florentine intellectuals such as Mario Luzi, Piero Bigongiari, Silvio Ramat, Sergio Salvi, and Lamberto Pignotti. He collaborated with them on the journal Quartiere, and together with Pignotti, curated the columns “Protocolli” and “Dopotutto” for the magazine Letteratura, where he published studies in semiotics applied to the language of poetry, aesthetics, and critical methodology. At the same time, he frequented literary figures like Enrico Falqui and Romano Bilenchi at the café "Paszkowski" and contributed to the writing of the Florentine Literary Cafés. Bilenchi not only found him a job at the publishing house Sansoni but also recommended him to Elio Vittorini, who published Tre Poemetti in the journal Il Menabò, which he co-edited with Italo Calvino.

Miccini’s artistic journey began in 1962 when he decided to abandon traditional linear poetry, finding it inadequate. He believed it was necessary to outline a new structure for poetry that extended beyond reading, creating a new kind of language. This led him to explore the overlap of different expressive codes, similar to the early 20th-century avant-garde movements like Surrealism, Dadaism, and Futurism—but without retracing their path. Drawing instead from the language of mass media, his early works gave rise to a new linguistic style where words and images intertwined, using the expressive tools of his own era.

In 1963, together with Lamberto Pignotti, musicians Sylvano Bussotti and Giuseppe Chiari, he founded Gruppo '70, coining the term “Visual Poetry.”

This marked a period of great productivity in terms of performances, exhibitions, and publications, beginning with two major conferences in Florence: Art and Communication (1963) and Art and Technology (1964). These explored interdisciplinary and inter-artistic practices—mixed media events that went beyond the visual to include all sensory experiences, adding sounds, noises, and scents. The goal was to break free from the traditional ways of writing poetry and invent new modes of expression beyond the rules of the publishing industry.

This new type of poetry gained traction, setting itself apart from Gruppo '63, which focused on self-reflective, regressive, and linguistic poetry. In contrast, Gruppo '70 created logo-iconic and synesthetic poetry, untethered from the written word alone.

In 1969, he founded the Centro Téchne in Florence (from the Greek word meaning both art and technical skill), where he edited the magazine of the same name devoted to verbo-visual experimentation. He organized meetings, exhibitions, and performances and published works such as Visual Poems 1962–1970, Archive of Italian Visual Poetry, and Ex Rebus (1970).

Following in the path of Gruppo '70, many artists and writers began exploring the intersection of art and mass communication. However, Visual Poetry still struggled for official critical recognition, as it was neither painting nor literature.

In the 1970s, in addition to his artistic and poetic endeavors, Miccini turned to teaching. He began collaborating with the University of Florence’s Faculty of Architecture as a scholar of Semiotic Disciplines, working alongside Egidio Mucci, professor of Visual Communication Techniques.

In 1972, he was invited to the Venice Biennale in the section The Book as a Place of Research, curated by Roberto Barilli and Daniela Palazzoli. He returned to the Biennale in 1980 for the exhibition The Time of the Museum.

In 1983, he co-founded the international group Logomotives with Arias-Misson, Jules Blaine, Jean François Bory, Paul De Vree, Sarenco, and Franco Verdi. Two years later, in 1985, he resumed his teaching career, moving from Florence to Verona, where he taught Contemporary Art History at the Fine Arts Academies of both Verona and Ravenna for eight years. In 1986, he returned once more to the Venice Biennale (Art and Science) and served as commissioner for the Visual Poetry section at the 11th Rome Quadriennale.

He participated in his final Venice Biennale in 1993 and returned to live in Florence, continuing to pursue his passion for poetry.

He took part in numerous international exhibitions, including at the MoMA in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery in Warsaw, and other institutions in Antwerp, Valencia, Ferrara’s Palazzo dei Diamanti, Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, GAM in Turin, Hayward Gallery in London, Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Palazzo Forti in Verona, and museums in Marseille, among others.

Numerous thesis and doctoral dissertations have been dedicated to Miccini’s work (including at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Belgrade), and he is included in many anthologies and school textbooks.

His works are also held in several public collections, including the Museo della Pilotta in Parma, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the civic galleries of Céret, Mantua, Bologna, Valencia, Antwerp, Łódź, Malo, Ghibellina, Warsaw, Perth, Tokyo, and others.

He passed away in his hometown, Florence, on June 19, 2007.