Death of Daniel Spoerri, last great of the New Realists

The Pompidou Center announced the death at the age of 94 of Daniel Spoerri, emblematic figure and founding member of New Realism: “His unique look at Art, through his “trap paintings” and his unexpected assemblages, was able to capture the moment, the ordinary and the surprising. His legacy will remain a source of inspiration and singular reflection”. The Swiss visual artist of Romanian origin was born in 1930 in Galați (Romania). He was first a dancer. Through Jean Tinguely, whom he met in 1949, he moved to Paris in 1959 and joined the group of New Realists where he joined Yves Klein, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Eva Aeppli, Arman, Raymond Hains or Jean Tinguely. Passionate about cooking, he invented “Eat Art”, which consists of fixing the traces of a meal in a work. He had also imagined a series entitled “Détrompe-l’oeil”, where he affixes a real object to a canvas or a tapestry found at flea markets and questions the boundaries between reality and illusion. He was the last “great” of the new realists still alive.