Daniel Spoerri

The young Daniel Spoerri was a dancer at the Bern Opera and next worked as a theatrical director, set designer and actor. In 1960 while collecting scrap metal for artist Jean Tinguely he thought of sticking objects that he collected in bulk to a stand that he raised vertically. He thus fixed in time a device that came together by chance. Daniel Spoerri invented Tableaux-Pièges, a table affixed to a wall that immortalizes the act of eating. This piece culminated in the opening, in Düsseldorf, of Restaurant Spoerri in 1968, and the Eat-Art Gallery in 1970, where he invites clients and artists to created edible art. Daniel Spoerri gathers together incongruous objects that he transforms into parodies of idols in order to make a mockery of all artistic values or conventions. Some of his groupings are then made into bronzes that can be found in Tuscany where he opened his own foundation.
He pushes the concept of drawing off creativity by organizing banquets and other activities in the village of Hadersdorf am Kamp (Austria) where he established his restaurant-museum, Eat Art & Ab Art in 2009.