The sale on Tuesday, December 3, 2019 organized by PIASA will be dedicated to artists' jewellery. This selection allows us to explore the history of 20th century art through the paths of a production that often extends and adapts the aesthetics of artists such as Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019), Claude Lalanne (1925-2019), Pol Bury (1922-2005) or Meret Oppenheim (1913-2085).
Born in Berlin in 1913, Meret Oppenheim is the author of a protean work whose one of its merits is to ignore the often rigid boundaries between artistic disciplines.
Influenced by the teaching of Hermann Hesse (her mother being the sister-in-law of the writer and poet), she left school at the age of 17 to learn painting. At the age of 19, she went to Paris - then the world capital of art - and attended, albeit from a distance, the famous Académie de la Grande Chaumière.
Meret OPPENHEIM (1913-1985)
Tête de poète
Estimation : 25000 / 30000 €
The following year, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Jean Arp (1886-1966) invited him to exhibit at the Salon des surindépendants with the surrealists. It was under these conditions that she met André Breton and became friends with Max Ernst and Man Ray. This American artist immortalized him with photographs that have since become part of the history of photography.
Before 1937, when she returned to Basel, Meret Oppenheim created the object Le Déjeuner en fourrure for the surrealist exhibition. This cup, saucer and little spoon covered with fur quickly became the symbol of surrealism after Alfred Barr, the first director of the MoMA, bought it and promoted its author.
In 1967, the year in which the artist made the prototype of this necklace entitled "Tête de poète" made of yellow gold and polychrome enamel, his work was the subject of an ambitious retrospective in Stockholm.
