Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely is a Swiss artist born the May 22nd 1925 with Freiburg and died the August 30th 1991 with Bern.

Presentation of the artist

“Jean releases an electrical energy as soon as it returns in a part it fills space” thus begins the portrait of Tinguely brushed by Niki de Saint-Phalle. Whatever the place where its personality of artist appears, one has the feeling to be in the presence of a dynamic and unforeseeable temperament, which seeks the exchange, the communication, and requires its partners an adaptability and a permanent desire of participation. Should not one reflect, with regard to Tinguely, in the direction where made Financial Times in connection with the exposure of Venice: “Undoubtedly all that is animated by more than one démoniaque breath, although we keep the cross fingers calmly… And beyond all the drolery of the whole and the spiritual refinement of mechanics, one can discover one there gaîté darker which are connected with despair. Its machines function marvelously well, but they do not produce anything, and it is with us to decipher their dark and ambiguous messages. ”

Its origins, its life

His/her father

His/her father, Charles Tinguely (1893 - 1970), originating in Bridge-The-City (the Rock), worked as employed in the chocolate factory Peter, Cailler, Kohler, future company Nestlé; he was moreover famous for his talents of footballer and exerted his passion in the area of Bulle. It was to be a man with the strong personality, authoritative, but liberal, and deeply attached to a patriarchal organization of the family leaving only one weak liberty of action to the woman.

His/her mother

The mother of Tinguely, Jeanne-Louise Ruffieux (1899-1980), had been born with Pâquier in a family from farmers to the many children. Before its marriage it was employed as servant. Its thin and tempting silhouette, as its marked but impressed features smoothness - which will characterize also its young person wire could very early attract the glances of the men.

Its youth

Jean-Charles Tinguely was born the May 22nd 1925, the day of the birthday of his mother. Its biography testifies very early to tuggings and tensions between him and his/her parents. II is Fribourgeois and enjoys at the same time the civic rights of the town of Basle in which it grows. II seems to appreciate this dual membership which gives him freedom to choose and to change. Thus it feels, according to its mood, sometimes Fribourgeois, sometimes Bâlois. II frequently finds refuge in the wood of the surroundings of Basle, in order to devote itself to the reading without being disturbed. It carries out the first works there • méta-mechanics. : waterwheels with sound effects. “. Then, I started to make a very odd thing: several Saturdays and Sundays of continuation, I started to build pretty small wheels out of wooden, arranged like that, along a brook. No idea of Article In the forest, I used a brook: it should be said that it was a forest of fir trees which formed a kind of cathedral, with sound qualities of a cathedral, the sounds developed formidably well. I made to two dozen small wheels of which each one had its own speed, and sometimes this speed was variable according to the speed of water, variable it too. Each wheel had a cam. A cam, it is a thing which ensures a irregularity the wheel - you see! That struck, that actuated on a small hammer which typed on various rusted cans or not, of different sonorities. These sounds, these tonalities, at different intervals, were distributed all the five to six meters, and these concerts lengthened sometimes up to hundred meters in the forest. I imagined the solitary walker then him also in the forest, which hears initially this concert before hearing the noises of the forest. Sometimes, that functioned up to fifteen days, it was obviously fragile but there were of them some which functioned during months. ”

Traumatisms of childhood

Alcoholic father

The unforeseeable reactions of an alcoholic and authoritative father and fears which it causes in his mother remained anchored in its memory. “I was very afraid of the black, all took worrying forms then, and today still I do not support papers with reasons, they point out my childish anguishes to me.”

Bombardment

Teenager, it was traumatisé by the blind bombardment of Basle. “We lived at the time on Winkelriedplatz. It was the December 16th 1940. Our district was particularly touched, the bombs exploded near, making steal the windows in glares and destroying all on their passage. 'Our house had to be evacuated. A German young mother, Frau Zorn, had taken her baby in the arms and, whereas she sought a shelter, she was struck with the head by a glare of shell. The impact tore off its top of the skull which remained suspended, with the hair, with the electric meter. The young woman lay dead on the ground. I removed the child of his arms. My mother had a crisis of hysteria. One had to draw aside it. I hid in the ruins, awaiting the enemy. I believe that if it had come, I would have killed it. Perhaps is this event at the origin of the dark images which live my Article Which knows?”

Experiments

Running away

“In 1940, at 15 years, I started from Basle, carrying the case of the scouts, in the idea to come to assistance of the Greek . At the time, the Italian troops attacked the Greeks starting from the Albania. A patrol discovered me some share after the tunnel of the St-Gothard whereas I was on the coach with coal. One put to me under the bolts with Bellinzona. I overflowed of pride. I was in a prison of men, with adults. I was caught very with the serious one, I had the impression to be extremely important and refused me with any consent. One finished by me renewing with Basle the shackles with the hands.”

Political initiation

From the house of Dr. Heinrich Koechlin with Basle, where found themselves taken refuge political, Communiste S and Anarchiste S, Tinguely drew from the conversations ignited what to nourish its ideas and to enrich its political training. Friedrich Engels, the Russians Kropotkine and Bakounine, like Alexandre Herzen, counted among its authors of predilection. The reading had become for him, which had a so curious spirit, a true need and its exceptional memory could do of it one of the sources of its vast knowledge.

Training of decorator

The plans, the dreams were a thing, but there were also the daily life, the constraints financial and the need for learning a trade. Tinguely became decorator of windows, an activity in which it did not fear to cause the scandal. His/her friend Daniel Spoerri, whom he had known towards 1949 in the Bohemian mediums of Zurich, remembers: “One day, Tinguely brought in the store of Lindner furs to Basle an old woman crasseuse Brouette, mackled concrete spots and filled of old construction materials then, after having skirted the invaluable furs with the great fear of the saleswomen, it poured the contents of its wheelbarrow and threw overcoat a coat of price - all that for the considerable wages of 300 FS. II had there of course at once an assembly and one called the police force.”

Of decorator with artist

If the windows decorated by Tinguely showed of such an unconcern and such a freedom, unusual for the time, it is undoubtedly because Tinguely was deeply convinced of its vocation of artist and regarded this work as an activity certainly necessary, but secondary. II is necessary to recall here that he also attended the School of the Applied arts of Basle. According to descriptions of Daniel Spoerri, the compositions carried out by Tinguely testified, the freedom even of their execution, of an audacity and a magic capacity extraordinary. “II worked already with rotary movements and obtained, using devices of traction, of the comic effects which it used to animate the figurines present in its compositions.” The Carnaval of Basle which animates the city in each spring since centuries is undoubtedly not foreign with its taste for derision, the relevant provocation and humor.

Painting with the cinetism

Tinguely however did not show any of these creations to the public. It is also known that it by the way carried out many oil-base paints of which it explains: “ I could continue on a painting during months, until total wear of the fabric: to scrape, return, without letting dry painting! It was impossible for me; I did not arrive at, say, to decide: Here, it is finished… It is from there, at the bottom, that the movement was essential on me. The movement quite simply enabled me to escape this petrification, for this purpose. ”

First failure

The artist in search of itself left finally for Paris during the winter 1952 - 1953. His/her friend Daniel Spoerri had been also for a six-month period in this high place of Article " For a spectacle of Danse we were to conceive a Décor. With the general repetition, when we drew on the strings, whereas the music had already started, all our installation fell on the head from the dancers, it was the catastrophe. The Ballet continued without decoration, with the music seulement." It was one of the rare cases where Tinguely missed something.

Result of its art

More and more its Sculpture S evolved to kinds of total works of art, requesting several directions simultaneously: sight, hearing, touch and sometimes even also sense of smell when there was emission of smoke.

Detailed biography of Jean Tinguely

Its works

Its style

Tinguely was not mechanic, not more than he was not technician or engineer. With the eyes of the specialists its machines were built in a lamentable way. However Tinguely had the infallible gift to cause the attention of the passers by, and to thus establish a communication by the use of familiar mechanisms which it diverted of their direction and their daily purpose. With Eureka an enormous machine designed for the national exposure Swiss of 1964, this characteristic already seemed an essential characteristic of its Article Imprégné of works of Marcel Duchamp (Ready-made translation: ironically promoted usual objects works of art) it falls under the spirit dadaïste which appears by the provocative buffoonery and derision often during public demonstrations.

Characteristics of its style

It is a sculptor who, above all, uses materials of recovery to which it gives again life by using engines to animate them. Tinguely is undeniable Master whose work counts among the most alive demonstrations of the Sculpture of the 20th century.

Message delivered by the artist

He calls in question the academism of Article He creates his machines in the context of the “glorious Thirty” (years according to the second world war) and of his “worship” of progress. Partly built using objects of recovery, the “machines” of Tinguely, consciously imperfect, refuse the worship of the new object produced by a consumer society. It is in advance over its time as a practitioner recycling. It knew to be “an ecological place” in the company to be able to make what it liked. In a company or the machine is increasingly present, it introduces it into art by showing its ludic and useless aspect. Following the example its machines which are autodétruisent after thirty minutes of operation, it delivers its philosophical message that in the life all has an end.

Museums

Space Tinguely Freiburg
Museum Tinguely with Basle

See too

Internal bonds

Artists with the close concerns

External bonds

tinguely.ch
Card artist of the MAMCO, Geneva

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