Farewell to Daniel Spoerri: the pioneer of Nouveau Réalisme leaves us.

Farewell to Daniel Spoerri: the great Romanian-born Swiss artist, known for his contributions to Nouveau Réalisme and the invention of the “tableaux-pièges” (trap paintings) technique, has passed away at the age of ninety-four. I will give an overview of the main moments of his life and work. Born as Daniel Feinstein in Galati, Romania, on March 27, 1930, he was one of Marcel Duchamp’s most significant heirs for exploring the expressive capacity of the ready-made, which he developed into a myriad of different projects. Spoerri has devoted his artistic career to capturing fleeting moments, transforming scenes from ordinary life into eternal works of art. His complex and multifaceted artistic vision has been deeply influenced by his personal experiences and the artistic currents of the 20th century.

Daniel Spoerri was born into a family of Jewish descent and spent his early childhood years in Romania. His family suffered persecution during the Nazi occupation, and in 1942 his father was arrested and killed by the Nazis. This tragic event deeply marks Spoerri’s life, and his mother, with him and his siblings, manages to escape to Switzerland, a country where Spoerri will find stability and become his new home. His education and artistic training then took place in Switzerland, where he undertook studies related to dance and choreography.

Change was Spoerri’s motto, who was not satisfied with what was already known and proven that to follow the power of his curiosity and the feverish restlessness that characterized him he never stopped creating new artistic ideas. He was the initiator and director of numerous environmental exhibition projects, such as the DyLaby at the Stedeliijk Museum, The Cocrodome at the Centre Pompidou, and created the most complex project of his life The Garden of Daniel Spoerri, in Seggiano on the slopes of Monte Amiata, Tuscany.

Career as a dancer and choreographer

Spoerri’s first artistic inclination is not toward visual art, but toward dance and theater. In the 1950s he worked as a dancer and choreographer in Switzerland and France, collaborating with important figures in the European theater scene. During this period, Spoerri developed a focus on the moving body and the importance of spatiality, elements that would later influence his visual works. Dance allowed him to explore art as a means of expressing human emotions, and theater brought him into contact with experimental artists.

Spoerri also came to be a first dancer at the Bern Opera, an assistant director, and a student in Paris of mime Ducrot. In the 1950s he was editor of a magazine of concrete poetry (“material”): the Edition MAT. However, his vocation for art manifested itself in Paris in the mythical place, Chambre No. 13 of the Hotel Carcasson on Rue Moffetard, where Allain Jouffroy and Arturo Schwarz got to experience as first observers the tableaux pieges, the trap paintings that seem to defy the law of gravity: already-used boards on which leaning objects were glued as three-dimensional still lifes and then hung/revealed on the walls as if they were paintings. For these Spoerri is famous and can be found in all major international museums.

The transition to visual art and Nouveau Réalisme

In the 1960s, Spoerri became involved with the Nouveau Réalisme movement, a group of artists who, like him, were interested in redefining art and finding new ways to represent reality. Founded by critic Pierre Restany, Nouveau Réalisme brought together artists such as Arman, César, Tinguely, and Yves Klein, each of whom interpreted in their own way the desire to integrate everyday life into art.

A co-signer of the Nouveaux Réalistes manifesto, written by Pierre Restany, along with Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, and Jacques Villeglé, he also participated in the movement’s resounding final ceremony in 1970 in Milan by creating the Tiara-shaped cake for Restany at Ristorante Biffi. As Spoerri’s name is also linked to the birth of so-called Eat Art, edible art closely connected to his trap paintings made by diners at his well-known Dusseldorf restaurant (1968) (the “Restaurant Spoerri”), followed shortly thereafter (1970) by the “Eat art-Galerie,” the gallery established on the floor above the restaurant to host a rich program of edible art exhibitions (Roy Lichtenstein, Dieter Roth, Joseph Beuys, Niki de Saint Phalle and many others). Then there are his culinary interests such as his treatise on the meatball, the most international food found in all the world’s traditions. He had discovered culinary traditions during nine months spent on a small Greek island, Simi, in the early 1960s. There he explored the traditional cuisine and natural herbs of the island and discovered this new vocation of his.

The invention of tableaux-pièges

Spoerri is notable for his innovative technique of tableaux-pièges, an art form that consists of “freezing” objects from everyday life, often scenes of meals or social interactions, by fixing them on a vertical surface as if they were a painting.

Tableaux-pièges are undoubtedly Spoerri’s most original contribution to contemporary art history. The idea was born when the artist had the intuition to fix the remains of a dinner party among friends on a canvas. With this technique, Spoerri captures the details of an everyday scene by freezing plates, cutlery, glasses and other objects exactly as they were left by the diners. The result is a “trap” for memory, a frozen representation of a moment, in which each object retains its own history and context. The tableau becomes a kind of relic of time, where clutter, leftover food and wine stains take on aesthetic and symbolic significance.

The concept behind the tableaux-pièges reflects Spoerri’s interest in randomness and the ephemeral element of life. He is fascinated by the possibility of stopping an instant and making it eternal, transforming the ordinary into something extraordinary. His tableaux are both a celebration of everyday life and a reflection on the transience of time.

Spoerri’s recent works and Garden

Throughout his long career, Spoerri has continued to explore new forms of expression and has expanded his artistic practice. One of his latest creations is the Daniel Spoerri Garden, located in Seggiano, Tuscany. In this garden, which serves as an outdoor museum, the artist has installed numerous sculptures and installations, inviting other artists to contribute to the project as well. Spoerri’s Garden is a place where nature and art come together, and where visitors can immerse themselves in the artist’s creative universe.

Daniel Spoerri arrived in Tuscany like all international travelers attracted by this region and decided to buy a property in southern Tuscany, in Maremma on the slopes of Mount Amiata, entranced by the fantastic landscape of this area. The estate he had purchased is traditionally called “The Paradise” because of its natural qualities that Spoerri though as an artist so metropolitan in his poetics, recognizes in this place, a special space. From being an admired guest, he soon became an active creator of a sculpture park where he placed his own works and those of friends such as Eva Aeppli, in a resista dimension of a collective project that resembles the poesie album, that is, the album of memories offered by those with whom he shared experiences and friendships. Today, more than 100 works by about 50 artists inhabit it and it represents one of the most important artists’ gardens in the world, becoming a huge environmental artwork that chronicles international artistic expressions of half a century with the poetics of the ready-made at its center. So the Garden as an immense immersive autobiographical work is destined to remain as an ideal testament of the great master’s life and poetics.

Today, his works can be found in important public and private collections, and his influence is visible in the work of many contemporary artists who continue to explore the materiality and meaning of everyday objects. Daniel Spoerri, with his unique sensibility and ability to play with time and memory, remains a timeless artist, capable of challenging convention and redefining the meaning of art.

Farewell to Daniel Spoerri: the pioneer of Nouveau Réalisme leaves us.

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