Jean Tinguely (May 22, 1925 - August 30, 1991)

Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics.

He was born in Freiburg, Switzerland.

He grew up in Basel and belonged to the Parisian avantgarde in 1950s and 60s.

After 1960, the Constructivist and Expressionist notions that art represented either the order of the outside world or the inner essence of the artist, withered under critical scrutiny. New artists such as Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely began to concentrate on technology and urban society. His "kinetic" sculptures treat movement as an artistic element and celebrate chance and irregularity: "Life is movement. Everything transforms itself, everything modifies itself ceaselessly." In an era that loved straight lines, right angles, and efficient engineering, Tinguely captured the art world’s imagination with his junk sculptures. Assembled from cast-off machine parts, scrap-yard cable, tape, and bone, the sculptures wobbled, warbled, churned, and clunked; because of their ready-made elements and Dadaist operations, the sculptures are often compared to the work of Marcel Duchamp. Tinguely’s kinetic sculptures emancipated the machine from its history of utility and remade it into an object of beauty and expression. In the 1950s, he created the "Meta-Matics," a series of interactive sculptures whose unpredictable movements are triggered by viewers. One sculpture draws colorful pictures when people insert felt-tipped markers into a pincer and push a button.

In the 1960s, his works lost their whimsy and playfulness, becoming dark metaphors for life in the industrial age -- instead of interacting with the pieces, viewers witnessed the machines perform and then self-destruct. "Homage to New York" (1960) inflated a weather balloon, released colored smoke, and operated a painting piano before offing itself in the courtyard of MoMA. "The Dissecting Machine" (1965) is a horrific assembly of mannequin appendages, toothed metal blades, and drill bits. Work on his massive sculptural project, Le Cyclop, began in 1969 near Milly-La-Foret, France. Except for his artist friends, he kept the project very much a secret and would not allow others to visit its production. It took ten years to make the monumental sculpture and ten years to complete the installation. Jean Tinguely invited fifteen artists to join him in the building of this great adventure. Inside the sculpture the visitor will discover works by Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, Arman, César, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Eva Aeppli Jesus Raphael Soto, Bernhard Luginbühl, Seppi Imhof, Rico Weber, Larry Rivers, Philippe Bouveret, Pierre Marie Lejeune... A strange apparition awaits the visitor in the midst of this forest: a massive twenty-two-metre high construction by Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, made of three hundred tons of metal. It rises like a totem in the form of a huge cyclopean head sparkling with mirrors and traversed with stairways, footbridges and mezzanines that enable the visitor to explore this enchanting world. On the outside, a giant ear, a moving eye inlaid like a diamond in the middle of the forehead, and a fountain gushing out of the mouth and running down the tongue like a waterslide. On the inside, a riveting clutter of riotous machines with gears made from scrap metal spinning, colliding, and clattering. Le Cyclop is a "museum" of Tinguely's mechanical universe and a monument of contemporary art. In 1987, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle gave Le Cyclop to the French government. In 1988, the Ministry of Culture set up an association 'Le Cyclop' to promote and look after the work. The site was officially inaugurated in 1994.

With each decade, the work became more apocalyptic; sculptures from the 1980s feature animal skeletons, found consumer objects, and unbearable noises. These later works capture the anxieties and horrors of modernity, prompting Werner Spies to describe Tinguely’s art as a "requiem to the movements and stereotypes of the homme-machine."

In 1971 he married Niki de Saint-Phalle.

He died in Bern.