Museum Tinguely, West façade giving onto the Solitude Park with Jean Tinguely’s, Schwimmwasserplastik, 1980
Jean Tinguely, Federding, Baluba, 1961 Museum Tinguely, Basel. Gift of Franz Meyer
© Photos: Christian Baur, Basel © 2009, ProLitteris
Jean Tinguely was an extremely prolific Swiss artist who spent his life creating kinetic sculpture as part of the Parisian avant-garde movement. He was born on May 22, 1925 in Fribourg, Switzerland. That same year, he and his mother moved to Basel, where Tinguely would attend school. In 1941, at the age of 16, he began an apprenticeship as a decorator. Upon finishing his apprenticeship in 1944, he then went on to attend the School of Arts and Crafts in Basel. A few years later, he became interested in the ideas of anarchy in the circle of Heiner Koechlin. In 1951, Tinguely married fellow sculptor Eva Aeppli. The following year, the couple moved to France, a move that would significantly influence Tinguely’s art career. Only two years later, his first exhibition opened at Galerie Arnaud in Paris.
In 1955, Tinguely moved into a studio in the Impasse Ronsin, where his neighbors were such prominent artists as Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Tinguely also showed his work in an exhibition at Galerie Samlaren in Stockholm that year. In 1958, Tinguely put together an exhibition at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris with fellow artist Yves Klein entitled, “Vitesse pure et stabilité monochrome” (Pure Speed and Monochrome Stability). The next year, Tinguely made a grand statement by scattering copies of a manifesto entitled “Für Statik” from an airplane over Düsseldorf, Germany. He then went on to exhibit “Méta-Matics de Jean Tinguely” at Galerie Iris Clert. In 1960, Tinguely created a self-destructing machine sculpture for the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It was called “Hommage à New York” (Homage to New York), and it is arguably the work that made him famous. He continued creating such self-destructing pieces for the next few years, detonating them in places like Denmark and Las Vegas, JEAN TINGUELY 49