"For me the machine is above all an instrument that permits me to be poetic. If you respect the machine, if you enter into a game with the machine, then perhaps you can make a truly joyous machine - by joyous I mean free."
On May 22nd, 2025 we celebrate the 100th birthday of one of the most inventive, pioneering and iconic artists of the 20th century: Jean Tinguely. Born in 1925 in Fribourg, Switzerland, Tinguely grew up fascinated by the movement of things.
He is known for his kinetic sculptures—works of art that incorporate movement as a key element to turning an otherwise static object into a living performance. He is also known for his self-destructive works of art. His works pushed the boundaries of art, movement, and technology.
"A machine should not just work; it should have a life of its own."
"Art is not a product but a process. I believe in things that move and things that change."
Amongst his many fantastic and fun creations are fountains accessible to all who want to visit and experience:
Jean Tinguely’s first public work Heureka (Eureka) can be seen at Zürichhorn along Lake Zurich in Switzerland. It was created for the Expo 64 Swiss National Exhibition in Lausanne. To this day, the sculpture operates 3 times per day, running for 8 minutes at a time.
Fasnachts Brunnen is a sculpture fountain built from 1975-1977 at the former City Theatre in Basel. It is called Tinguely’s Carnival Fountain and houses 10 motorized iron sculptures that move and spray water into the air.
"I work with movement, so it’s inevitable that it’s a spectacle. I’m cinematic. I create things that are in motion, so it’s either a party or it’s not."
Perhaps the most famous of the fountains is the Stravinsky Fountain, built and inaugurated in 1983. This was one of the many collaborations between Tinguely and Saint Phalle, inspired by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. There are 6 sculptures by Saint Phalle, 7 by Tinguely, and 3 collaborations totaling to 16 sculptures altogether.
In the French village of Château-Chinon is another fountain installation, this one a collaboration between Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle. It is named Fontaine de Château-Chinon and was commissioned by former French president (and mayor of the town) Francois Mitterand in 1988. The fountain, located in front of the former courthouse includes 8 sculptures created by Saint Phalle that are set in motion by Tinguely’s kinetic machines.
Perhaps unexpected for this artist of seemingly loud and chaotic creations is that he made and kept many journals, or “scrapbooks”, filled with sketches, collages, random memorabilia, as well as newspaper clippings, post cards, various letters and photos. They serve as a time capsule for Tinguely and his fellow artists’ accomplishments.
The Niki Charitable Art Foundation holds five of these scrapbooks in their archives as part of the Tinguely Estate succession to share with scholars and researchers.
There are several interesting and noteworthy items scattered throughout the scrapbooks that were collected by Tinguely.
The first was published in a French newspaper with the heading La machine a trouvé son poète (the machine has found its poet). The article, dated May 1960, introduces Tinguely as a sort of engineer who invents machines that have no specific use, just have been created for the sake of being made. It promoted an upcoming exhibition at Galerie des 4 Saisons showcasing Tinguely’s recent works at that time.
Describing the artists’ works as “others do nothing and turn only for the pleasure of turning. It’s a fantastic and happy world that hums in the gallery. Finally the machine has found its poet”.
Jean Tinguely was a key figure in the Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) movement which was founded in France in 1960 by Pierre Restany. It was a post-war response with its artists using found objects and pop culture influences to create their own artworks. The group was compromised of artists Yves Klein, Daniel Spoerri, Arman, Jean Tinguely, Raymond Hains, Jacques Villeglé, Francois Dufrêne, Martial Raysse, Mimmo Rotella, César, Christo, Gérard Dechamps, and the only female artist Niki de Saint Phalle.
Another newspaper clipping captures an image of Tinguely with fellow artists Niki de Saint Phalle and Robert Rauschenberg with the caption “If you are a modern sculptor you look like this”.
Although Tinguely’s art had deeper meaning and reflection on destruction, chaos, and constant changes, he also revealed his playfulness and wit, especially depicted in this picture.
Friendships and artistic collaborations were an integral part of Jean Tinguely’s life. Tinguely was first married to Swiss artist Eva Aeppli, who created life-sized fabric sculptures which often featured haunting, gaunt faces and slender hands.
Tinguely and Aeppli both became part of the avant-garde art scene in Paris where they first moved with another Swiss artist, Daniel Spoerri. Thereafter the couple moved into Impasse Ronsin, where they met and befriended Niki de Saint Phalle. By 1960, Aeppli had moved out of the Impasse Ronsin studio and Tinguely was living with Saint Phalle.
The Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany, is exhibiting a comprehensive retrospective celebrating the 100th birthdays of both Jean Tinguely and Eva Aeppli. The exhibition Mechanics and Humanity: Eva Aeppli and Jean Tinguely is running from March 23 to August 24, 2025.
Jean Tinguely and Francois Dufrêne were both prominent artists in the Nouveau Réalisme movement. Although the two never collaborated on any projects directly, they often participated in the same exhibitions. They pushed the boundaries of conventional beliefs of reality. Both used everyday objects and scraps; with Dufrêne concentrating on sound poetry, writings and performance art while Tinguely created his poetry with moving metal machines.
There is also a handwritten letter to Tinguely from famed Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, thanking him for participating in the festivities in his honor at Figueres bullring in 1961, where Tinguely and Saint Phalle created a mechanical bull out of fireworks together.
The journal pages below documents Tinguely’s many interests and ideas, among them his love for professional car racing. Among them an article of a serious career-ending accident that British driver Stirling Moss was involved in at the 10th Glover Trophy race in England, and an informational booklet about The Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Both Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle had great admiration for the artist Simon Rodia and counted their visit to the site in the early 1960’s as one of their artistic influences to create monumental works.
Tinguely had a profound connection to Formula One racing throughout his lifetime and it influenced his art work greatly. Tinguely created several artworks that were inspired by Formula One and also designed racing uniforms for some drivers.
He was good friends with several drivers, Jackie Ickx, Niki Lauda, and Joseph (Jo) Siffert. Tinguely’s close friendship with Jo Siffert and their mutual respect for each others’ chosen professions inspired a sculpture in honor of Siffert, titled Hommage à Jo Siffert. It is located in their native town of Fribourg and works as a fountain.
Adhered to another journal page is a handwritten note from Mr. and Mrs. de Menil, art patrons and founders of The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. John and Dominique de Menil established the Menil Foundation in the 1950’s, and Mrs. de Menil opened The Menil Collection Museum in 1987. The note is a dinner invitation honoring Jean Tinguely before his exhibition, Study for an End of the World No. 2, at the Iolas Gallery in New York in the fall of 1962.
Mr. And Mrs. de Menil were long time supporters of Tinguely and collected many of his works. Many of these pieces are housed at The Menil Collection today, but the de Menil’s also made generous donations of many of his works to the Houston Museum of Art in 1969.
In honor of Tinguely’s birthday, The Menil Collection is posting an online feature about the artist and the de Menils, and will have a number of works by Tinguely on view in its galleries in addition to the display of the artist’s fountains at the Neighborhood Community Day which occurred May 17th, 2025.
Study for an End of the World No. 1 and No. 2 was a series of works that Tinguely built and then supervised their self destruction.
The first performance piece titled Study for an End of the World No. 1, took place at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in 1961. The article below described the scene, minute by minute, as the self destructive machine was programmed to run from “18.13 to 18.25”.
The second part of the series, Study for an End of the World No. 2 occurred in the Nevada desert and was recorded for an NBC television special in 1962 titled David Brinkley’s Journal: The End of the World. Brilliant engineer and friend Billy Klüver was in charge of the electrical portion of the machine and Niki de Saint Phalle also joined Tinguely to assist him in the preparations.
"I take the noise and blood and brutality and make a work of art of them. That makes them doubly ironic, to be raised to the level of art. I feel a tremendous relief that the whole thing is going to be destroyed, because it’s like a lunatic end to everything monstrous in the world."
Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle were life long partners in both art and love. They married in 1971 but had been romantically involved since the late 1950’s.
Saint Phalle said about Jean: “Somewhere in a magic space we met. Like neither your background or mine existed. It was a meeting of pure electricity. We couldn’t sit down together without creating something new.”
Tinguely also spoke very highly in admiration of the artist and their collaborations.
The two collaborated on monumental works of art, including HON (1966), Le Paradis Fantastique (1967), Le Cyclop (began 1969), Le Crocodrome (1977), and La Fontaine Stravinsky (1983).
Le Cyclop (1968-1994) is a monumental sculpture in Milly-la-Forêt, France conceived and led by Jean Tinguely. He brought together many artists, including Eva Aeppli, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, Bernhard Luginbühl, Larry Rivers, Rico Webber, Arman, and Sotto, and many more artists to contribute to this tremendous project. This is a rare, 22 meter high sculpture in the middle of the forest that is a monument to the 20th century; with its horror and glory, science and art, wars and poetry, and of course kinetics. It integrates sound, movement, metals and other industrial materials, along with the various works created by the individual artists.
It is for this massive project that Jean Tinguely and Josef “Seppi” Imhof began working together. Seppi and Tinguely formed a great friendship and working relationship that lasted until Tinguely’s death in 1991. Seppi became a part of the Museum Tinguely team and trained conservator Jean-Marc Galliard. Galliard is the guardian of Tinguely’s works, ensuring the longevity of the sculptures with attention and care.
Some of Tinguely’s significant friendships (which also created extraordinary artistic collaborations) were with Bernard Luginbühl, Daniel Spoerri, Larry Rivers, and Billy Klüver.
Luginbühl and Tinguely, both Swiss artists, met in the early 1950’s. They both used metals and found objects to create performative art. Their greatest collaboration was Le Cyclop, to which Luginbühl contributed a giant pinball machine and the ear.
Crocodrome de Zig et Puce was a joint installation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977-1978). It featured an interactive dragon Crocodrome, measuring at 30m L x 10m W x 10m H. Besides Tinguely and Luginbühl, both Niki de Saint Phalle and Daniel Spoerri also created parts of the dragon.
Some of this will be brought back next month, thanks to the exhibition Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely & Pontus Hulten, curated by Sophie Duplaix in Paris. This will be the first exhibition and collaboration between Centre Pompidou and Grand Palais RMN in the spirit of Saint Phalle, Tinguely, and Hulten.
Jean Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri met in Switzerland and Spoerri helped Tinguely move to Paris. Spoerri was the co-founder of the Nouveau Réalisme and had many joint exhibitions with Tinguely. He is known for developing a visual arts concept called “snare-pictures” which consisted of mounting objects or meals (exactly as they were originally placed on tabletops) as assemblages to depict everyday scenes.
Tinguely met Larry Rivers in Paris in the avant-garde scene in the late 1950’s. Larry Rivers, a New York City painter and jazz man, met Tinguely as neighbors when they were both living at Impasse Ronsin. Although they had two completely different artistic styles and came from two very different worlds, they formed a long lasting friendship. They collaborated on several mixed media kinetic sculptures.
Billy Klüver was a lab researcher and engineer in New York when he met Jean Tinguely in 1960. Tinguely was preparing for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Tinguely created Homage to New York ; a self-destructive kinetic sculpture made of bicycle wheels, fans, metals, piano parts, and smoke bombs. Klüver was asked to work on the electrical and wiring so that it could self-destruct in the MoMA sculpture garden.
The event became iconic and legendary as parts of the machinery malfunctioned and the pieces did not completely self destruct. In fact, part of the sculpture caught fire due to overheating of one of the motors, which in turn caused a panic from both the museum and its visitors. The New York Fire Department intervened and stopped Tinguely’s machine from completely self destructing and possibly burning the museum itself down.
Tinguely himself was very amused by all of it:
"I’m an extremist artist…By doing extreme things, we annoy everyone. We annoy insurers, we annoy carriers, we annoy museums whose doors are too small... we annoy a lot of people!"
Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland contains the largest, permanent collection of Jean Tinguely’s works and archives. Opening in 1996, the museum has Tinguely’s kinetic art sculptures, illustrations, and photographs spanning Tinguely’s life and art. Niki de Saint Phalle gifted the museum over 50 major works from the Estate of Jean Tinguely shortly after the museum opened.
Gwendolyn. Source: Wandering Danny
The Niki Charitable Art Foundation would like to highlight and congratulate Musée Rath (MAH) in Genève for organizing their exhibition in Switzerland that celebrates Jean Tinguely’s centennial. The Niki Charitable Art Foundation has proudly donated 20 of Jean Tinguely’s drawings to the museum, which will be displayed during the exhibition.
In honor of Jean Tinguely’s birthday exclusive merchandise has been produced.
The Swiss manufacturing company Caran d’Ache in collaboration with the rights holders for Jean Tinguely has created a special edition set of colored Prismo pencils encased in a tin box with two various Tinguely artworks to choose from. Tinguely used these in his art.
Also, Swiss biscuit company Kambly is re-releasing their first artist edition cookie tin Tinguely created with the company in 1989. It is a limited series release in commemoration of his centennial birthday.
There area number of events of remembrance and commemoration being hosted by galleries, museums, and institutions:
Hauser & Wirth Somerset : Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely MYTHS & MACHINES. From May 18, 2025 to Feb 1, 2026
Museum Tinguely : Birthday Party, Tinguely100. May 22, 2025
Musée Rath (MAH) Genève, Switzerland : Exposition Jean Tinguely. From May 22 to September 7, 2025. Head Curator: Samuel Gross
Kambly Art Collection : Exposition Tinguely. From May 22 to June 22, 2025
L’Atelier – Fribourg : Jean Tinguely Souvenirs d’un parcours artistitique. From May 24 to July 5, 2025
Centre Pompidou x Grand Palais RMN : Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely & Pontus Hulten. From June 20, 2025 to January 6, 2026. Head Curator: Sophie Duplaix. This exhibition also celebrates the birthday of Pontus Hulten, who would have been 101 years old on June 21, 2025.
Ambassade Suisse en France : Soirée Suisse 2025, Hommage à Jean Tinguely. June 25, 2025. In collaboration with Canton de Fribourg.
MAH Fribourg, Espace Jean Tinguely & Niki de Saint Phalle. Official Day Hommage to Jean Tinguely in the City of Fribourg. June 15, 2025
MAH Fribourg, Espace Jean Tinguely & Niki de Saint Phalle. Exposition Jean Tinguely – Emetteur poétique from November 21, 2025 to February 22, 2026
Le Cyclop – La Monumentale Folie de Jean Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle et leurs amis. May 27, 2025. Edited by Aude Bodet, Clément Dirié, Béatrice Salmon. Text by Baptiste Brun, Jill Carrick, Dominik Müller, Camille Paulhan, Denys Riout
Les fabuleuses machines de Jean Tinguely, RTS
"My work is a reflection of my life. I’m interested in the process of life, in what is moving, in what is constantly changing."
Jean Tinguely’s centennial is a commemoration of his lasting influence on contemporary art and the unique individual he was to family, friends, colleagues, and the art world as a whole.
VIVA JEAN AND HIS REBELLIOUS, LIBERATED MACHINES!