Olle Emanuelsson Collection presents Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely – sharp satire of modern machine culture
The Swiss Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) opened his first extensive museum exhibition in 1960 at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld, Germany. The museum director had seen Tinguely's work in Paris and instantly invited him to put up an exhibition at his museum. It was with mixed emotions that Tinguely took on the white room and the pleasantness that represents a museum. Here he exhibits his machine sculptures, some of his older reliefs, a méta-matic machine, and the fountains, some of which are shown for the first time.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue was handed out, with instructions on building a méta-mechanical relief. At the building instruction, Tinguely had written, ’I encourage you to build, or let build, this work of art according to these instructions, I regard the exact executed result as an original work by me, Tinguely.’ There were 50 reliefs printed, of which 30 were sold, and the museum kept the other 20. Out of the ones held by the museum, 16 reliefs were built under Tinguely’s watchful eye by Alfred Otto Müller in Cologne. The item in this auction is one of those 16.
Tinguely is the foremost representative of the mobile sculpture. His machines – méta-matics – made out of scrap, moves irrationally, squeaking and choppy with sudden disruptions. With their constantly shifting movements, they make up a parody of the perfect machine. The founder of the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm, Pontus Hultén, writes about Tinguely’s relief sculptures in “Jean Tinguely, Méta”:
“Tinguely had, with all reason, a feeling that with his new reliefs and sculptures, having opened a new chapter in the world of contemporary art. What spoke to him the most was that his machines were a kind of demonstration of the principle of relativity, an applied relativism. They represent the constant change that everything is surrendered to unless it’s frozen down to -273°C.”
Jean Tinguely became good friends with Pontus Hultén in Paris during the 1950s, and today we can view Tinguely’s and Niki de Saint Phalle’s permanent sculpture group “the Paradise” from 1966 outside the entrance of the Modern Art museum at Skeppsholmen, Stockholm.
Bærtling abandoned the optical art that had inspired him for some time and started to develop his own style where triangles and diagonals became the theme. He created a new pictorial world consisting of measurements, proportions, and synthetic, programmed colours from basic geometrical elements. Everything was executed methodically, where the geometrical understanding took over, and the “open shape” was born. Through the term “the open shape”, Bærtling strived to portray space and movement through his geometrical shapes that continue outside the picture’s frame.
Lines and large fields of black are characteristic of his paintings, contrasted with “Baertling white”, his own unique shade of white. Bærtling preferred artificial colours that didn’t associate with nature and claimed that black was a magical colour, both easy, happy, and beautiful.
To be sold at Olle Emanuelsson Collection October 6
When is the viewing and auction?
Viewing 1 October – 5 October, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm.
Open Fri–Sat 11 am – 4 pm, Mon–Tue 11 am – 5 pm.
Auction 6 October, 3 pm, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm.
To the artwork
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Björn Extergren
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