Description
Spoerri Daniel (1930)
Romanian artist, Swiss naturalized, Spoerri was born in Galati, Romania, under the name of Daniel Isaak Feinstein. During the Second World War, he moved to Zurich due to the Nazi persecution. In Switzerland, he dedicated himself to various arts, distinguishing as dancer, director, choreographer, poet and painter. To follow his passion for dance, he frequently stayed in Paris, where, in the end of the Fifties, he moved permanently. In the French capital, he met several artists (Duchamp, Ray and others), founded the publishing house MAT and started to paint his famous tableaux-pièges o “snare-pictures”, works created by pasting on tables objects exposed vertically, that assume an unusual perspective.
The aim of the artist’s research was the transformation of reality: in 1960, Spoerri was one of those who inspired the “Manifeste du Nouveau Réalisme” and some years later even the idea of Détrompe-l’œil, where objects of everyday life alter the imaginary to which they are connected.
Between the end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies, he opened a restaurant and the Eat Gallery: he dedicated to sculpture and created still lifes with animal carcasses. During the Eighties, Spoerri realized the “Ethno-syncretic objects”: primitive masks, flea market’s objects and religious symbols that mock every faith and artistic convention.
He teaches at the art academies of Brest, Monaco and Vienna. Since 1989, he lived in Tuscany, where he created “Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri” a park-museum with his own works and those by his artist friends. At the height of his career, France bestowed on him the Grand Prix National de la Sculpture (1993).
