Jean Tinguely


Jean Tinguely was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century. Tinguely's art satirized automation and the technological overproduction of material goods.

Life

Born in Fribourg, Tinguely grew up in Basel. From 1941 to 1945, he studied under artist Julia Ris at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel, where he encountered the work of Kurt Schwitters and other Dadaists, which later influenced his kinetic constructions.
He moved to France in 1952 with his first wife, Swiss artist Eva Aeppli, to pursue a career in art. He belonged to the Parisian avant-garde in the mid-twentieth century and was one of the artists who signed the New Realist's manifesto in 1960.
File:Basel Tinguely vor Museum.jpg|250px|thumb|The Tinguely Fountain in front of the Tinguely Museum in Basel
File:Zürichhorn - Blatterwiese 2013-06-13 15-07-26.JPG|250px|thumb|Tinguely's Heureka in Zürich-Seefeld
His best-known work, a self-destroying sculpture titled Homage to New York, only partially self-destructed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, although his later work, Study for an End of the World No. 2, detonated successfully in front of an audience gathered in the desert outside Las Vegas. Then in 1961 Tinguely's work was included in the landmark "Art of Assemblage"
exhibition at MoMA curated by William C. Seitz. Seitz said of Tinguely in the exhibition's catalogue that his "most recent work, influenced by Rauschenberg and Stankiewicz, fuses the tradition of kinetic art with that of assemblage".
Tinguely married fellow Swiss artist Eva Aeppli in 1951.
In 1971, he married his second wife Niki de Saint Phalle with whom he collaborated on several artistic projects, such as the Hon – en katedral or Le Cyclop. Tinguely and Saint Phalle collaborated artistically for over three decades.
Tinguely died of heart failure in 1991 at the age of 66 in the Inselspital in Bern.

Legacy

There have been three major retrospectives of Tinguely's work in the last few decades, firstly in 1987 at the Palazzo Grassi In 1987 in Venice, secondly the "Jean Tinguely: Machine Spectacle" at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam which ran from October 2016 until March 2017, and thirdly at the Hangar PirelliBicocca in Milan from the fall of 2024 into the early winter of 2025.

Jean Tinguely centennial exhibitions in Geneva and Paris

To mark one hundred years since the kinetic sculptor’s birth, twin exhibitions honor Jean Tinguely’s playful, machine‑based art. Geneva’s Musée Rath focuses on rarely exhibited drawings and fountain designs, while Paris’s Grand Palais showcases major works like the Stravinsky Fountain.

Public works

Hon – en katedral was an art installation made in collaboration with Niki de Saint-Phalle that was shown at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1966. The exhibition consisted of a sculpture of a colorful pregnant woman lying on her back with her legs wide apart. The sculpture was 25–26 meters long, about 6 meters high and 11 metres wide. It was built of scaffolding and chicken wire covered with fabric and fiberglass, painted with brightly coloured poster paint. Through a door-sized entry in the location of the woman's vagina, visitors could go into the sculpture. Inside was a screen showing Greta Garbo films, a goldfish pond, and a soft drink vending machine. Johann Sebastian Bach's organ music played through speakers. The exhibition was created by Saint-Phalle, Tinguely, and Per Olov Ultvedt. It had 80,000 visitors during the exhibition period from 4 June to 9 September 1966.

Noise music recordings

  • 1963 "Sounds of Sculpture", 7", Minami Gallery, Tokyo, Japan_
  • 1972 'Méta', book+7_, Propyläen Verlag, Stockholm
  • 1983 'Sculptures at The Tate Gallery, 1982'_, Audio Arts cassette
  • 1983 'Meta-Harmonie H' incl. in ‘Meridians 2_ compilation cassette, Touch
  • 1994/5 'Bascule VII', 10”, Manhood Records 002
  • 2001 'Relief Meta-Mechanique Sonore I' incl. in 'A Diagnosis' compilation, Revolver-Archiv für Aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Influence on others

  • In Arthur Penn's Mickey One the mime-like Artist with his self-destructive machine is reminiscent of Tinguely
  • Survival Research Laboratories, directed by Mark Pauline
  • Prominent kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson described Tinguely as his "primary spiritual artistic mentor", and paid homage to him in his work "Tinguely in Moscow".