Death of the artist Daniel Spoerri, creator of “trap paintings” and major figure of New Realism

Many of us rediscovered him in 2022, during the exhibition dedicated to him by Mamac in Nice bringing together more than 300 of his works. Born in 1930 in Romania, major figure of New Realism and inventor of Eat-Art, Daniel Spoerri died on November 6 at the age of 94. “ He energized the art world by making anecdotes and the rejects of consumer society a field of reflection for contemporary art. », recalls the Center Pompidou in a press release released yesterday evening. The Marmottan Monet museum in Paris is currently presenting one of his “trap paintings” (Table n°5, 1968) in the “Trompe-l’oeil” exhibition. In 2022, the artist opened the doors of his studio in Vienna to us.

Curiosities galore

As if Daniel Spoerri resided at the heart of his work, he only has to go a few meters to obtain all the materials that constitute his paintings. At the end of its street, the Wienzeile, the Naschmarkt is a market where you can find food but also small antique shops and numerous restaurants offering local cuisine. To access his workshop, you have to cross a porch overlooking a quiet, tree-lined courtyard and then climb two floors. Since 2007, the artist, born in 1930 in Galati in Romania, but who lived in Basel, Paris and Los Angeles, has settled in Vienna in a bourgeois apartment which allows him to completely combine art and life, time for work, reflection and rest.

In his apartment, he receives people behind a large desk and lets visitors wander around as they wish, discovering all of these everyday testimonies which he groups by family. Thus, in the succession of rooms, shelves hold stuffed birds, shells, stones or primitive effigies, other pieces of furniture resemble cabinets of curiosities, while tables support an accumulation of crockery, fabrics or a considerable collection of finds and purchases that have not yet been sorted.

It’s orderly, in a way, and whimsical, colorful or atonal. As in his works, the stacks are horizontal or vertical and the periods mingle. Everything seems to interest Daniel Spoerri, even if we find certain recurring categories. And the workshop allows you to understand how he selects and positions objects, by themes, but also shapes, colors or poetic definitions. He can combine fragments of dolls, notably heads and hands, associated with small butterflies, for a square format canvas that day. On the walls, he has kept some old works, including some of his favorites, which always fascinate exhibition curators or museum directors, his assistant tells us… They also testify to the flawless consistency of the artist’s approach, since his first trap paintings or false trap paintings.

An obsessive relationship with the object

The question we ask ourselves when meeting Daniel Spoerri, who was first a star dancer, director then author of concrete poetry, concerns precisely the link he has had with the object since his first plastic creations. “ I am not attached to the concept of the object, he states straight away, because this would refer directly to the ready-made. However, my job consists of highlighting a situation, with all that it entails, putting together articles of value with others which have none. Besides, without money at the start, I wasn’t likely to surround myself with luxury and that’s why I started going to flea markets. A trap painting is the reconstruction of a scene at a specific moment, like the banquets that I still organize today. At the end of the meal, I choose a table, but if only one person wants to keep an object that they placed on it and not let it be immortalized, I select another. »

In 1949, in Basel, where his mother emigrated during the Second World War, he met Jean Tinguely and Eva Aeppli, of whom he still speaks with emotion. Ten years later, all three arrived in Paris, where Daniel Spoerri became involved with the future New Realists, notably Arman, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains and Yves Klein, with whom he had numerous discussions. However, he denies being an intellectual and specifies that he is driven by intuition, choosing sequences “that please him”. He sets the time and moments of sharing, often using the term “ experiences to live “. Relational aesthetics, a concept created by the art historian Nicolas Bourriaud, could have been, in part, inspired by his actions, but he says he has not heard of it…

Art as an experience to live

The first meals orchestrated by Daniel Spoerri took place in 1963, before he opened, in 1968, a restaurant in Düsseldorf, then an Eat Art Gallery, again participatory. Today, in each of his foundations (the Ausstellungshaus Spoerri is located in the Viennese countryside, and Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri in Seggiano, Italy), the artist ensures that there is a restaurant to welcome the public . Because he does not hide the fact that he experienced hunger. During his childhood, he went to help farmers to glean some potatoes which he sold at the Galati market. After his father was murdered during a pogrom in 1941, he had to move in with his uncle, where he suffered deprivation. Without forgetting the very first years in Paris. From there comes his relationship to food, literally lived in a mode of survival, and to accumulation. In his works, one should not see any criticism of the emerging consumer society, and in the presence of animals or bones, no ecological consideration. Daniel Spoerri says “ that he resolves personal questions, in which death is very present ».

Chasing away potentially disastrous memories, he then reveals with pleasure one of his latest finds, a mini bronze shoe. Next to it is a text by Alfred Jarry that he is reading. Daniel Spoerri did not have any art education and is proud to have acquired his knowledge on his own. Moreover, in a neighboring room, an impressive bookcase covering two sections of walls bears witness to this. But if we draw his attention to this subject, he assures that he does not try to understand everything and that he remains “ a little childish, like these young people always having a bunch of things in their pockets… “. He likes living in Vienna, where he still meets artists and feels at the heart of a central Europe made up of Romanians, like him, but also Poles, Serbs and Slavs. If he doesn’t visit all the exhibitions dedicated to him, he can’t wait to discover his latest solo show, at Mamac in Nice. Especially since Room 13 – a reconstruction of where he lived in Paris from 1959 to 1965 – has just been bequeathed by the RNK Foundation, thanks to the commitment of Ingeborg Henze-Ketterer, and will integrate the permanent collections of the institution. This gesture represents a beautiful tribute to the man who will celebrate his 92nd birthday on March 27.

“The Theater of Objects by Daniel Spoerri”
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
Place Yves Klein, 06000 Nice
www.mamac-nice.org
Until March 27, 2022