JEAN TINGUELY (Switzerland, 1925 -1991).
Untitled, 1991, from the series "Olympic Suite".
Lithograph on 270 grams Vélin d'Arches paper, copy 110/250.
Signed in plate and hand-numbered.
This work is part of the "Suite Olympic Centennial", complete edition 110/250, which will be auctioned on 27 September 2022, in 50 consecutive lots numbered 35245230 to 35245280.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.
The Olympic Suite is made up of 50 lithographs and serigraphs chosen to represent various contemporary artistic trends. It was published to commemorate the first centenary of modern Olympism. The artists chosen work in very diverse movements and styles, from the hyperrealism of Antonio López to the abstraction of Sol Lewitt, including abstract expressionism, the geometrism of Arden Quin, conceptual art, pop art, the new realism of Baldaccini and Rotella, and the new fauvism of Dokoupil, among others. Among the artists represented there are creators of great international renown, widely recognised by the critics.
The painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely was, for more than thirty years, a key figure in the European avant-garde movement. Kinetic art is a current based on the aesthetics of movement. It has been represented in sculpture, a technique in which the distinctive resources are the moving components of the works. Its purpose is to give the spectator a spectacle of movement, or at least the illusion of it. Jean Tinguely's mobile works were created to destroy or self-destruct, all in an effort to satirise the overproduction of meaningless goods manufactured by advanced industrial society. After turning to abstract painting, the Swiss artist experimented with movement as a form of expression. His first works, exhibited in Paris, were moved by electric motors. These monumental pieces depicted an ironic universe of useless machines which, it seemed, were producing. He applied the term meta-mechanics to his creations. "The concept is to show that a work of art is never a definitive object, but that its creative capacities are, in truth, the potentialities given to it by both the artist and the spectators.