Marcel Duchamp is talent

Born in Blainville-Crevon (France) on 28/07/1887; Death in Neuilly-sur-Seine (France) on the 02/10/1968

Marcel Duchamp is a world-renowned artist, considered one of the precursors of contemporary art.

Born in 1887, Marcel Duchamp comes from a family of six children, many like Jacques Villon are artists and introduce him to painting. After having failed at the entrance to the Beaux-Arts, he began working for a printer, then exhibited from 1906 cartoons and paintings of Impressionist inspiration.

Marcel Duchamp made “Coffee Mill” in 1911, his first representation of objects. In 1913, his canvas “The Naked in the Stairs”, presented at the Armory Show in New York, makes him truly known. From then on, he divides his time between France and the United States and produces his best-known works, including “Bicycle Wheel”, “Bottle Holder”, “Large Glass”, and “Fountain” which represents a urinal. It gives birth to the movement “ready-made” highlighting the aesthetics of everyday objects.

During the 1920s, Marcel Duchamp tried many cinematic experiences. He participated in the film Entr’acte with Man Ray in 1924, and directed the short film Anemic Cinéma in 1926. Throughout his life, Marcel Duchamp will continue to appear in various films and documentaries such as “Maya Deren” in 1944 or “Dada” in 1967.

The 1930s were marked by surrealism and Marcel Duchamp contributed to the movement alongside André Breton, his friend, for the magazine “Surrealism at the service of the revolution”, and he co-organized in Paris in 1938 the international exhibition surrealism.

It was during the 1950s that Marcel Duchamp’s work was recognized all over the world, by the emergence of young American artists who considered him a precursor, but also because his readymades were reissued in 1954. The last major achievement “Given”, for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, takes him nearly twenty years and is broadcast in 1969, the year after his death at the age of 81.