Jean Tinguely

Liviana Martin

On 22 May 2025, the centenary of the birth of Jean Tinguely, born in Fribourg in 1925 and died in Bern in 1991, will be celebrated with exhibitions and conferences throughout Europe.
It is a fitting recognition for the visionary artist, a pioneer of the twentieth century, who revolutionized the very concept of a work of art, was one of the major exponents of kinetic art and a brilliant forerunner of modern creative trends.
Tinguely spent his childhood and adolescence in Basel: from an early age, he enjoyed inventing small machines placed in the woods and moved by water. In 1953, he moved to Paris, where he worked on compositions of structures made of metal wires, colored and light, inspired by Calder’s sculptures. At the Galerie Arnaud in Paris, he presented sculptures that were moved by small electric motors located inside, the Méta-mécaniques, a name given by his friend and art critic Pontus Hultén, to define something that goes beyond, transcends the object. Tinguely’s sculptures in fact went beyond the utilitarian function of the machine, challenging the tyranny of functionality, to free the intrinsic poetry of the object.
In addition to movement, noise, disharmonious sound becomes the other element that characterizes Tinguely’s research.
In 1960, in New York, he created an enormous installation 7 metres long and 8 metres high, composed of bicycles, tricycles, a bathtub, bottles, and a spectacular machine that self-destructed in 27 minutes.
Starting in the 1960s, he worked with various artists, including Niki de Saint Phalle (who would become his wife and with whom he would have a long artistic partnership), Spoerri, Rauschenberg, in a perspective of artistic democracy, far from authorship. Together with the artists of Nouveau Réalisme, the movement he joined, to compose his works he used scraps, waste, what consumer society eliminates and which in his hands takes on new life.
His funeral was attended by thousands of people who, as per his instructions, followed in parade a sound sculpture mounted on an old tractor, which, between puffs and explosions of firecrackers, made its way through the crowd. The last, irreverent farewell of the brilliant artist.
The first retrospective dedicated to Tinguely in Italy after his death is hosted in the vast spaces of the Pirelli HangarBicocca, a building in Milan that was once home to a locomotive factory and is now a non-profit foundation dedicated to the promotion of contemporary art, a venue that is free and accessible to all. With a surface area of 15,000 square meters, it is one of the largest exhibition spaces in Europe. In addition to the area dedicated to temporary exhibitions, it hosts the permanent work by Anselm Kiefer, The Seven Heavenly Palaces, reinforced concrete towers that are worth a visit in and of themselves.
“The machine is first and foremost the instrument that allows me to be poetic. If you respect it, if you challenge yourself with the machine, then perhaps you can really give life to a joyful machine – and by joyful I mean free“. These are the words of Tinguely, perfect words to introduce the exhibition. More than 40 works are on display, created in the time span from the 1950s to the 1990s, some set in motion by engines, others static, others still illuminated by rows of brightly colored light bulbs.

Entering the space of the Navate is like crossing the threshold of a cathedral, where sacred statues are replaced by machines. Upon entering, immediately after having pulled aside a heavy curtain, I almost feel a sense of bewilderment: from afar, I notice strange mechanisms moving, producing dodecaphonic music, colored light bulbs illuminate the semi-darkness, black gears move alternating different shapes. But as I get closer, I distinguish two imposing works at the entrance: a sort of assembly line, composed of wheels, belts, electric motors, entitled Cercle et carré-éclatés, a reference to the circle and the square, perfect figures, fundamental elements of abstractionism, here however exploded inside a machine that spins empty, with uncoordinated and disharmonious movements. In the other work, entitled Méta-Maxi (a reference to going beyond the object), a colourful creation where plastic and plush characters ironically emerge from among the gears, the sound is caused by the movement of the gears and by the percussions.
“Come and create your painting with wit, fury or elegance, with the Méta-Matics by Tinguely, the sculptures that paint!” The invitation to the exhibition in Paris in 1959 wanted to involve the spectators in becoming creators themselves, overcoming the idea of the artist as the only creator. The Méta -Matics were small machines that, when operated by the public, could create abstract drawings on paper.
Even at the Milan exhibition, a reproduction of these machines offered to the visitors the opportunity to become an artist for a day.
Tinguely anticipated by several decades the use of artificial intelligence, which we use today to create projects, texts, drawings and much more.
Tinguely’s works are also a biting criticism of consumerism and the pop art movement, very popular at the time in America and Europe: the object, for Warhol and his companions, is an icon, a symbol of the well-being of the middle class. Marylin, Mao, Campbell’s soups are colorful and joyful reproductions of the characters who themselves become objects of consumption and goods that have become indispensable. Tinguely’s works are mostly monochrome, the color is used sparingly, the sculptures are made with waste materials and scraps found on the street, which are given dignity and poetry.
The monumental sculpture Requiem pour une feuille morte, steel structure, wooden and metal wheels, leather straps, electric motor, backlit, is a magnificent example of monochrome, the antithesis of pop art works. “Black, says Tinguely, is a way to make vanished the object found.”
In the artist, there has always been a death drive (an accident in 1957 crushed his rib cage, in 1971 a pilot friend died in a race) that he tries to exorcise in his works. His works are destroyed: it happens in New York, but also in Milan (archival materials in the exhibition document the event) with the performance entitled La Vittoria or the suicide of the machine . A 10-meter-high sculpture is installed in Piazza Duomo: it is a gigantic phallus that burns and sprays firecrackers into the sky, accompanied by the Neapolitan music of O sole mio. The event marks the funeral of Nouveau Réalisme . It is 1970 and until now the performances have taken place inside art galleries. Among the first artists, Tinguely takes them outside, thus involving a greater number of spectators.
Finally, his love for racing cars, for car races, for the thrill of speed are embodied in works such as Scheckenskarrette – Viva Ferrari (the wheelbarrow of fear), Pit stop, composed of pieces of Renault Formula 1, Shuttlecock, with pieces of a sidecar that had participated in the 1988 World Motorcycle Championship.
The exhibition is not only fascinating for adults, but is also frequented by many children who enjoy themselves as if they were in a playground. Tinguely would be ecstatic because he said that “I would like to create something funny, where children can climb and jump, something flashy, cheerful, crazy”. It is the universe of his creations, joyful and disturbing, dominated by an unbridled imagination and a playful sense of the eternal child that was in him and that we recognize in ourselves.

Jean Tinguely,Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milano
10/10/2024 – 02/02/2025