Jean TINGUELY

Born in Fribourg in 1925 and died in Bern in 1991, Jean Tinguely was one of the leading figures of kinetic art and Nouveau Réalisme. Raised in Basel, he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts before moving to Paris in 1952 with Eva Aeppli, where he quickly became involved with the avant-garde.

From his earliest mechanical sculptures, Jean Tinguely made movement a central part of his artistic practice. Wheels, motors, belts and found materials were transformed into unstable, poetic and deliberately absurd machines that humorously challenged the logic of industrial production. His participation in the 1955 exhibition Le Mouvement at Galerie Denise René confirmed his place among the pioneers of kinetic art.

In 1959, his famous Méta-Matics, machines capable of producing drawings on their own, playfully questioned the roles of the artist, chance and the viewer in the creative process. The following year, Tinguely became one of the founding artists of Nouveau Réalisme around the critic Pierre Restany and created Homage to New York at the Museum of Modern Art, a monumental machine designed to self-destruct.

Strongly influenced by the spirit of Dada, Jean Tinguely developed a body of work centered on movement, sound, accident and appropriation. His collaboration with Niki de Saint Phalle resulted in several major projects, including Le Cyclop in Milly-la-Forêt and the Stravinsky Fountain, created in Paris in 1983 near the Centre Pompidou.

In addition to his sculptures, Jean Tinguely’s drawings, lithographs and prints occupy an important place in his work. Rapid lines, diagrams, handwritten notes and machine designs bring the energy of his constructions onto paper. Throughout his career, Tinguely transformed the machine into an object that could be playful, fragile and critical at once, creating one of the most distinctive artistic languages of twentieth-century contemporary art.