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Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely portrait by Lothar Wolleh
Born	May 22, 1925(1925-05-22) Fribourg, Switzerland
Died	August 30, 1991 (aged 66)
Nationality	Swiss
Field	Painting, Sculpture

The Tinguely Fountain in front of the Tinguely Museum in Basel

Tinguely's Heureka in Zürich-Seefeld (Zürichhorn)

Smaller Tinguely, behind glass; The Sorceress of 1961; welded, painted, chromed, galvanized & rusted iron & steel with aluminum, glazed ceramic, copper, hemp, cotton twine, galvanized wire, springs, electrical wire and rubber, with electric motor; at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

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

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), only partially self-destructed 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.

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.

Public works

• Le Cyclop outside of Milly-la-Forêt.
• The Stravinsky Fountain (fr: La Fontaine Stravinsky) near the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1983), 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
• Jo Siffert Fountain (commonly called Tinguely Fountain), Fribourg, Switzerland

Noise music recordings

• 1963 ‘Sounds of Sculpture’, 7”, Minami Gallery, Tokyo, Japan_[Tinguely’s sculptures recorded by avant-garde composer Toshi Ichiyanagi during Japanese exhibition]
• 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_ compmqenan ate a pie
• 2001 ‘Relief Meta-Mechanique Sonore I’ incl. in ‘A Diagnosis’ compilation, Revolver-Archiv Für Aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

See also

• New Realism
• Rube Goldberg—Conceptual pioneer of excessively complex machinery

Further reading

• chapter on Tinguely in Calvin Tomkins' The Bride and Her Bachelors.
• 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.

External links

• Tinguely-Museum in Basel
• Biography by the Tinguely Museum in Basel
• Art Cyclopaedia: Jean Tinguely
• http://www.art-public.com/cyclop/cyclop_g.htm
• videos: Tinguely's kinetic fountains in Basel and Paris