Meret Oppenheim

(Germany-Switzerland, 06/10/1913 - 15/11/1985)

Self-Portrait, Skull and Ornament (1964)

Best known for her surrealist creations that blurred the boundaries between art, dream and everyday life, Oppenheim was one of the most original and influential artists of the twentieth century with her oeuvre incorporating painting, sculpture, design and poetry, all unified by a fearless spirit of experimentation and an enduring fascination with the subconscious.

Born in Berlin, Oppenheim moved with her Swiss mother and grandmother to Switzerland at the outbreak of war in 1914 after her father was conscripted. Both her mother, also an artist, and grandmother had a keen interest in psychoanalysis and the intellectually stimulating but turbulent environment exposed a young Oppenheim to Freudian thought (her grandmother was among the first women to be analysed by Carl Jung) which would later influence her engagement with Surrealism’s focus on dreams and the unconscious.

As a child, she showed a natural inclination toward creativity and fantasy, keeping illustrated diaries filled with strange creatures and dreamlike imagery. After finishing secondary school, she studied briefly at the School of Applied Arts in Basel before moving to Paris in 1932 to pursue art more seriously. Here, she quickly became immersed in the Surrealist circle, becoming close friends with her fellow Surrealists such as André Breton, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Alberto Giacometti and began to exhibit her works in their company.

It was at this time that Oppenheim created one of the most quintessentially Surrealist works, Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure). Consisting of a teacup, saucer and spoon covered entirely in gazelle fur, Object was first exhibited in 1936 at the Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking exhibition Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism in New York, where it became an instant icon of Surrealism.

The first artist to incarnate all the qualities of the femme-enfant, Oppenheim’s youth, beauty, uninhibited behavior and creative spirit made her the perfect example of the Surrealist woman – her precarious walks on the ledges of high buildings and the “surrealist” food she concocted from marzipan in her studio all contributed to the creation of an image of the Surrealist woman as beautiful, independent and creative. But this public persona was of little help in her search for artistic maturity with the objects that ensured her place in subsequent histories of the movement offering flashes of brilliance rather than evidence of sustained artistic growth.

Suddenly labelled as the ‘fur cup artists’, Oppenheim was conflicted and uncertain about her life as an artist, finding that her new public role as the darling of Surrealism difficult to accept and struggling with the narrow interpretation of her work. By 1937, she was severely depressed and returned to Basel to train as an art conservator. Her creative crisis, which lasted until 1954, led her to destroy or abandon what little work she began making. Nevertheless, in Basel she became a member of the Gruppe 33 and participated in several of their group shows.

In the 1950s, Oppenheim reemerged with a renewed confidence and a broader artistic vision, rejecting the notion that Surrealism or any single movement could define her art, asserting instead that creative freedom was paramount. Her later works explored themes of transformation, myth and the cycles of nature, and she began using diverse materials including wood, stone, metal and textiles to create sculptures that often combined humor, sensuality and symbolism.

Returning to Switzerland after her marriage in 1959, Oppenheim’s work gained increasing recognition as she exhibited widely and received commissions for public sculptures. She also became an important advocate for women artists, challenging the gender biases that had limited her early career. Her statement that “the freedom will come when it is no longer remarkable to be a woman who makes art” reflected her progressive views on gender and creativity.

In her later years, Oppenheim continued to produce paintings, drawings and assemblages that reflected her fascination with metamorphosis and the interplay between nature and culture. She was celebrated for her independence of mind and her refusal to conform to artistic or social expectations with her career spanning far beyond her fur-lined teacup and standing as a testament to imagination, freedom and the subversive power of the surreal.

Image: Méret Oppenheim, Self-Portrait, Skull and Ornament (1964). Gelatin silver print, 25.1 x 20.3 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A.