Jean Tinguely

JEAN TINGUELY (Switzerland, 1925–1991).
Untitled, 1991, from the ‘Suite Olímpica’ series.
Lithograph on 270-gramm Arches Vélin paper, print no. 246/250.
Signed on the plate and numbered by hand.
Dimensions: 90 x 63 cm.
The “Suite Olímpica” comprises 50 lithographs and silkscreen prints selected to represent various contemporary artistic trends. It was published to commemorate the centenary of the modern Olympic movement. The selected artists work in a wide variety of movements and styles, ranging from the hyperrealism of Antonio López to the abstraction of Sol Lewitt, including Abstract Expressionism, the geometric art of Arden Quin, Conceptual Art, Pop Art, the new realism of Baldaccini and Rotella, and the new Fauvism of Dokoupil, amongst others. Among the artists featured are creators of great international renown, widely recognised by critics.
The painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely was, for over thirty years, a key figure in the European avant-garde movement. Kinetic art is a movement based on the aesthetics of movement. It has been expressed through sculpture, a medium in which the distinctive features are the moving components of the works. Its purpose is to provide the viewer with a spectacle of movement, or at least the illusion of it. Jean Tinguely’s moving works were created to be destroyed or to self-destruct, all with the aim of satirising the overproduction of meaningless goods manufactured by advanced industrial society. After dabbling in abstract painting, the Swiss artist experimented with movement as a form of expression. His early works, exhibited in Paris, were set in motion by electric motors. These monumental pieces depicted an ironic universe of useless machines that appeared to be in the process of production. He applied the term ‘meta-mechanics’ to refer to his creations. “The concept is to show that a work of art is never a definitive object, but rather that its creative capacities are, in truth, the potentialities bestowed upon it by both the artist and the viewers.”