Jean Tinguely

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The Tinguely Fountain in front of the Tinguely Museum in Basel

Tinguely's Narva (1961), in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 in Fribourg, Switzerland – 30 August 1991 in Bern) was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics.

Tinguely grew up in Basel, but moved to France as a young adult to pursue a career in art. He belonged to the Parisian avantgarde in the mid-twentieth century and was one of the artists who signed the New Realist's manifesto (Nouveau réalisme) in 1960.

His best-known work, a self-destroying sculpture titled Homage to New York (1960), famously failed to self-destruct at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, although his later work, Study for an End of the World No. 2 (1962), detonated successfully in front of an audience gathered in the desert outside Las Vegas.

Tinguely's art satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society.

In Arthur Penn's Mickey One (1965) the mime-like Artist (Kamatari Fujiwara) with his self-destructive machine is an obvious Tinguely tribute.

In 1971, Tinguely married Niki de Saint-Phalle.

[edit] Public works

Le Cyclop outside of Milly-la-Forêt.
Stravinsky Fountain (or Fontaine des automates) near the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1982), a collaboration with Niki de Saint-Phalle
Tinguely Fountain (1977) in Basel
Lifesaver Fountain on Königstrasse in Duisburg, Germany, a collaboration with Niki de Saint-Phalle

[edit] See also

K. G. Pontus Hultén; Author of Jean Tinguely "Meta" (English translation published in 1975 by New York Graphic Society Ltd., Boston) Large hard cover, 519 Illustrations. Translated from German by Mary Whittall. Original German version published 1972.
New Realism
Rube Goldberg—Conceptual pioneer of excessively complex machinery