As a visual artist, he gained international recognition in the late 1960s with his snare pictures (tableaux pièges).

These moments fixed on tabletops, which freeze a very specific instant in the course of a meal or a randomly found situation (e.g. a work table or a flea market stall), as if caught in a snare (French: piège) - a piece of everyday reality, captured forever.

Snare pictures originally arose and still do arise in the course of actual dinners, but Spoerri developed the concept further, and thus »composed« snare pictures, which were appropriately also referred to as faux tableaux pièges (fake snare pictures). Although these are the same as the »actual« snare pictures in terms of appearance, they represent more of a still life in a narrower sense of the term.

»Objects have always fascinated me. I've always had things in my pockets - like all children; the subtle difference is that not all children continue with this until they are 90...«

Daniel Spoerri, 2020

With the opening of his artists' garden "Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri" in southern Tuscany in 1997, Daniel Spoerri began to increasingly implement his sometimes large-format assemblages in bronze - not least for the practical reason that his works in the sculpture park should or had to defy wind and weather.

However, the main reason for starting to realize his works as bronzes was an artistic one: a sculpture made entirely of one material appears more cohesive.

Spoerri wanted the viewer of his assemblages to see them not only as a collection of diverse objects, but also as a unified whole. Art critics were often surprised by this step - and not only in a positive way - after all, for some Spoerri was »the object artist who works with old junk«.

It is easy to imagine that Spoerri would not have been satisfied with a series of identical works in the long run. After the first casts in the foundry, he was particularly fascinated by the sprues, which are usually removed after cooling. For him, these »veins« became unplanned or plannable additional elements, sprung from the moment - and different with every cast.

In the spirit of »capturing the moment«, he decided to leave the sprues as they were, often even adding unnecessary ones to the casting, which means that the bronzes he has created since 2005 have become »originals in series« - no cast of the same assemblage is like the other. 

The result of this experimentation with a material completely unfamiliar to him are impressively poetic, partly erotic, partly - because of their size - if not frightening, at least expansive creatures of mystical proportions and groups with immense power.

Daniel Spoerri pursued the basic idea that art shouldn't cost a lot very early on in his work, and it culminated in the late 1950s in the Edition MAT that he created.

He inspired artist friends to produce one work for each edition in a specific score in order to then sell the individual objects at a standard price. The objects were made by the artists as a series, but not as a fixed copy of a template, but as a separate, individual work according to the basic scheme defined by the artist. As a result, no object in a series is exactly the same as the other – the basic concept of Multiple.

Over the years in which the edition was published (1959, 1964 and 1965), the ranks of participating artists would ultimately include such important names as Jean Tinguely, Vasarely, Heinz Mack, J.R. Soto, Yves Klein, Christo - to name just a few. 

Central themes in Daniel Spoerri's work are the human sense of taste and the questioning of eating habits. The alienation of food, of meal processes, the game with expectations and appearances, all of this questions or at least irritates traditional sensory perceptions and traditions.

His engagement with cooking traditions and with the change in the choice of ingredients not only resulted in a considerable collection of cookbooks and cooking utensils, but also in his own nine-part »recipe library«, which he compiled. For its realisation he collaborated with close artist friends, e.g. Roland Topor or Bernhard Luginbühl, who were invited to illustrate it.

With his »bread objects« Daniel Spoerri questioned the misappropriation of food, which is often seen as taboo.

Above all, however, the »staging« of banquets using all the aforementioned stylistic devices of alienation and surprise is an essential point of Spoerri's Eat Art.

As a logical consequence, from the late 1960s Daniel Spoerri always made sure that Eat Art was present in all his places of activity - while the Spoerri restaurant only existed during his professorship in Düsseldorf, the “Non-Solo Eat Art” restaurant in the “Giardino” and the “Esslokal” adjacent to his exhibition house in Hadersdorf have become permanent establishments.

In the mid-1950s, Daniel Spoerri dealt with Concrete poetry. Together with Claus Bremer he edited a magazine called »material«, a monthly publication for various authors - including Dieter Roth, Emmett Williams, Gherasim Luca and Pol Bury.

To which extent Daniel Spoerri sees everyday objects as the main protagonists in his work, becomes evident in 1967 in his groundbreaking and repeatedly published book An Anecdoted Topography of Chance. From the salt shaker to the eggshell - all objects and leftovers that happened to be lying around on a table were mapped and described.

In personal encounters Daniel Spoerri often shows an almost mischievous pertness. With subtle, enigmatic wit, he usually casually comments on statements or situations. This subtle wit is also captured in his quilts – gems put together from letters and words from now outdated cloths found at the flea market with embroidered pious sayings that once used to be hung behind sofas to protect the wall.