Marcel Duchamp   1887 - 1968 

The enigmatic Duchamp (1887-1968), originally from France but living most of his life in New York, kept in close touch with Avant-garde European art between the wars. A friend of Dali, he was associated with both the Dada and Surrealist movements, creating the first infamous ‘readymades’ – The Bicycle Wheel on a Stool (1913) and Fountain (1917) a signed urinal.

Duchamp refused to accept the standards and practices of an established art system, conventions that were considered essential to attain fame and financial success: he refused to repeat himself, to develop a recognizable style or to show his work regularly. It is certainly the more theoretical aspects of his art and life that have had the most profound impact on artists later in the century.

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