Remembrance

It is our sad duty to inform you that Daniel Spoerri passed away on Wednesday, November 6th.

Ballet dancer, assistant director, editor of »material«, a magazine for concrete poetry in the 1950s, co-signatory of the manifesto of the »Nouveaux Réalistes«, object artist, instigator of numerous art projects, inventor of »Eat-Art«, founder of »Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri - Hic Terminus Haeret« and the »Daniel Spoerri Charitable Foundation« in Austria... to name just a few from a long list of his activities.

With his three-dimensional still lifes, the »snare pictures«, Daniel Spoerri astonished his audience as early as 1959 because they seem to defy the law of gravity. But his inventiveness did not stop there. Time and again, Spoerri has created surprises. In addition to the early »Edition MAT«, his banquets should be mentioned, with which he reflected on the eating habits of Western society as »Eat Art«, questioning them and making them tangible.

Change was Spoerri's motto; he was reluctant to settle into the familiar, the tried and tested.

His curiosity led him from Zurich and Bern to Paris, where he switched from ballet dance to the visual arts with his »Tableaux piège« and quickly made a name for himself. In order to escape the fame that was on the horizon and to avoid being pinned down to one genre, he retreated to the small Greek island of Symi for nine months. There he explored the themes of cuisine and eating culture, then opened the »Restaurant Spoerri« in Düsseldorf, which quickly became a hotspot in the art scene. A short time later, he founded an »Eat Art Gallery« on the floor above, in which works by artists dealing with food were presented: Roy Lichtenstein, Dieter Roth, Joseph Beuys and others.

Daniel Spoerri's first teaching position was in Cologne. He developed exhibitions and other sensational events with the students in his »Multi-Media Class«. He resigned from a professorship in Munich in the mid-1990s as he was of the opinion that free art and civil servant status were not compatible.

One of his great passions was his sculpture park »Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri« in Italy, where installations by him and over 50 other artists are at view. Austria owes him for the »Ausstellungshaus Spoerri« in Hadersdorf, which has been documenting his diverse artistic work in dialogue with the works of fellow artists in changing exhibitions since 2009.

Daniel Spoerri lived in Vienna from 2008; he worked on expanding his oeuvre until shortly before his death.

Spoerri received many honours and awards for his life's work. He has now died in Vienna at the age of 94.