MERET OPPENHEIM

In 1981 Galerie Krinzinger, Innsbruck presented with Situation Schweiz its first solo exhibition of MeretOppenheim. In 1997 Ursula Krinzinger, in collaboration with Bettina M. Busse, curated the exhibitioneine andere Retrospektive¹ which was shown at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem,Netherlands, the Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden, the Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland, and theMuseum der Moderne, Rupertinum, Salzburg, following the exhibition at the Krinzinger Gallery inVienna. Originale 1932 – 1985 was the last exhibition at Galerie Krinzinger.

Meret Oppenheim’s originality and artistic vision were the impetus for her many decades of dynamicwork. From her beginnings in Paris in the 1930s to her career in Switzerland after the Second WorldWar, she created unconventional groups of works full of wit that defy classification in clearly separablecategories of medium, style and art movement. When she died in 1985 at the age of seventy-two, heroeuvre included not only objects made of assembled objects, narrative paintings and geometricabstractions, but also jewellery designs, sculptures in public spaces and poems.²

Meret Oppenheim was born in Berlin on October 6, 1913. She decided to become an artist while still inher teens and went to Paris in 1933 with the painter Irene Zurkinden. There she met Alberto Giacomettiand Hans Arp, Man Ray photographed her for the cycle Érotique voilée, which earned her the reputationof the muse of the Surrealists. In 1936 she moved back to Basel. She lived and worked alternately inParis, Bern and in Carona and died in Basel on November 15, 1985. Her works have been shown innumerous institutional exhibitions and retrospectives including Fantastic Art, Dada Surrealism, at theMuseum of Modern Art, New York, 1936; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1967; Museum der StadtSolothurn/Kunstmuseum Winterthur/Wilhelm-Lehmruck Museum, 1974; Kunsthalle Bern, 1984;Kunstmuseum Bern, 1987; Guggenheim Museum New York, 1996; Museum für Kunst und GewerbeHamburg, 2003; Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna/Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2013; and KunstmuseumBern, 2013. Most recently, her work was featured in the extensive retrospective Mon exposition 2021 atthe Kunstmuseum Bern, 2022 at the Menil Collection, Houston Texas and the Museum of Modern Artin New York.

¹ Catalogue: Meret Oppenheim: Eine andere Retrospektive/A Differnet Retrospektive, ed. by Galerie Krinzinger Vienna, Exhib. Cat. Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnheim/Uppsala Konstmuseum/Helsinki City Art Museum, Zurich/New York 1997² from the foreword of the catalogue Meret Oppenheim Mon exposition, by Nina Zimmer, Dir. Kunstmuseum Bern/Zentrum Paul Klee, Rebecca Rabinow Dir. The Menil Collection, Houston, Glenn D. Lowry, Dir. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, ed. Nina Zimmer, Natalie Dupêcher, Anne Umland with Lee Colón and Nora Lohner, Hirmer Verlag, Munich, 2021