Pierre-Fernandez Arman

French painter and sculptor, member of the Nouveau Réalisme group, an artistic movement that represents humanity through everyday objects (shoes, watches, coins, etc.). In 1959, he began his cycle of “accumulations,” assembling multiple examples of the same object to evoke the emerging consumer society. From the 1960s, his works included objects, often musical instruments, subjected to extreme gestures: crushing, burning, cutting, and resin-coating, then encased in Plexiglas, symbolizing his critique of the modern world in which everything is destined to deteriorate. In the 1970s, he immersed various objects in his “beton” series, embedding them in concrete. In the 1980s, in the “fragmentation” series, he worked on objects that were sectioned, glued onto canvas or wood, and then painted. Arman described himself as “a painter who makes sculpture.” His works are exhibited in major museums worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Berardo Museum in Lisbon, and the MoMA in New York.

Works on display:

• Double Gambit, chess set, bronze, 1986