Daniel Spoerri

Daniel Spoerri, born in Romania in 1930, is considered one of the most important representatives of object art and is the inventor of "Eat Art". The questioning of the concept of art and what constitutes a work of art has accompanied Daniel Spoerri's work to date.

Spoerri originally studied classical dance and pantomime at the theater dance school in Zurich. In 1952, he received a scholarship to study dance in Paris, where he moved in 1959 and met the artists Jean Tinguely, Arman, Francis Dufrene, Yves Klein and Pierre Restany. Together with these artists, Daniel Spoerri founded "Nouveau Réalisme" in 1960. The group of artists set themselves the goal of using new techniques and found objects - the so-called "objets trouvés" - to integrate the reality of everyday life into art.

Daniel Spoeri finally achieved international fame with his "trap pictures", which were created from the 1960s onwards. The so-called "tableaux pièges" are objects or assemblages that are mounted on the wall rotated by 90 degrees, in which a piece of reality is caught like in a trap: remnants of finished or broken meals fixed with glue and preservatives create a sculptural snapshot and become three-dimensional still lifes. The "Fallenbild" also marks the beginnings of "Eat-Art". In addition, Daniel Spoerri ran an experimental restaurant from 1968 to 1972, to which an "Ear Art Gallery" was attached.

Spoerri's works are to be understood as an expanded concept of reality: Simultaneously an excerpt of the transient present, as well as an artistic alienation. The creation of the "Fallenbild" not only marked the beginning of Spoerri's artistic career, he was also one of the first artists of the post-war period to make the handling of found situations and objects the central theme of his world of ideas and his artistic work.

Daniel Spoerri has lived and worked in Vienna since 2007.