Meret Oppenheim
Meret Oppenheim is born on 6 October 1913 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the daughter of a Swiss mother and a German doctor. She spends her early childhood and school years in Steinen (southern Germany) and Delémont (Switzerland), as well as holidays in Carona (Ticino).
In 1930 she convinces her father of her dislike of traditional schooling with Das Schulheft (Schoolgirl’s Notebook), X = Hase, and in 1930 she leaves the Gymnasium ‚to become an artist‘. In 1932, at the age of 18, she travels to Paris with her artist friend Irène Zurkinden, where she lives and draws at the Hotel Odessa. She also attends the Académie de la grande Chaumière for a while.
In 1933, she comes into contact with the surrealist group around André Breton: Alberto Giacometti and Jean Arp visit her in her studio and invite her to take part in the group exhibition at the Salon des Surindépendants. In 1933/1934, she often models for Man Ray, including for the famous series of nudes by a printing press.
In 1933, she meets Max Ernst, with whom she begins an intense love affair that she ends about 18 months later.
1935/1936: In order to earn money, Meret Oppenheim turns to jewellery, furniture and fashion design. A fur-covered bracelet provides the impulse for her most famous work, Object, which André Breton titled Breakfast in Fur. First exhibited in Paris at the Charles Ratton Gallery in 1936, ‚the fur cup‘ (as it is often called) travels to New York in December 1936 for the exhibition ‚Fantastic Art Dates Surrealism‘ and is acquired by the then director of the MoMA New York, Alfred Barr, Jr., for the museum.
1937 marks the beginning of a long life and creative crisis that lasts until 1954. Meret Oppenheim returns to Basel, where her parents have taken refuge. She attends the Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule for two years; the colour exercises and restoration classes prove ‚enormously useful‘ to her.
In 1939 she returns to Paris and takes part in an exhibition of fantastic furniture at Galerie René Drouin et Leo Castelli with Max Ernst, Leonor Fini and others, exhibiting objects and a table with birds‘ feet. She spends the war years in Basel. She works, destroys a lot, but produces some of her most compelling works.
In 1945 she meets the businessman Wolfgang La Roche, whom she marries in 1949. The couple lives in Bern, Thun and Oberhofen, depending on where Wolfgang works. In 1950 she returnes to Paris for the first time and meets up with old friends. In 1954, she moves into a studio in Bern and her crisis is finally over. She creates many new works.
In 1956, she designs costumes and masks for Daniel Spoerri’s production of Picasso’s How to Catch Wishes by the Tail and translates the text into German. The play is performed at the Theater der Unteren Stadt in Bern.
In 1959, Meret Oppenheim organises a spring festival in Bern, a dinner served on a naked woman. Three couples, including the woman on the table, take part in the meal. André Breton asks her to repeat this festin in Paris a few months later, on the occasion of the ‚Exposition InteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme‚ at the Galerie Cordier.
After numerous solo and group exhibitions in the following years in Switzerland, Italy, the USA, Germany and France, a new milestone comes in 1967: her first major retrospective at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. In December of the same year Wolfgang La Roche dies. Meret Oppenheim moves into an apartment with a studio in Bern, and in 1972 she also rents another one in Paris.
1974-1975: Travelling retrospective exhibition in museums in Solothurn, Winterthur and Duisburg.
In 1975 she is awarded the Art Prize of the City of Basel and gives a highly acclaimed speech on the issue of the „female artist“. An important quotation from this speech: “nobody will give you freedom, you have to take it”.
1981: Sansibar is published, a collection of poems and serigraphs.
1982: Meret Oppenheim is awarded the Grand Prize of the City of Berlin. She is invited to take part in documenta 7 in Kassel. The monograph Defiance in the Face of Freedom by Bice Curiger is published. Exhibitions in Korea, Austria, Italy, Germany and Switzerland.
In 1983 she creates a large fountain sculpture for the Waisenhausplatz in Bern. The Goethe Institute in Genoa organises a travelling exhibition with stops in Milan and Naples.
1984: Retrospective at the Kunsthalle Bern and the ARC, Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, with further stops in Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich. Suhrkamp Verlag publishes Meret Oppenheim’s poems.
1985: Works on a fountain sculpture for the Jardins de l’ancienne école Polytechnique in Paris – La Spirale, the Course of Nature.
Meret Oppenheim dies of a heart attack on November 15 in Basel, the day of the presentation of her book Caroline (poems and etchings).