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Description: signed and dated 54 on the left side painted metal elements on painted wooden box with wooden pulleys, rubber belt, metal fixtures and electric motor inside

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Dimensions: 41 by 41 by 13cm.; 16 1/8 by 16 1/8 by 5 1/8 in.

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Provenance: Galerie Denise René Hans Mayer, Krefeld
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1968

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Exhibited:

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Published: Christina Bischofberger, Jean Tinguely: Catalogue Raisonné Sculptures and Reliefs 1954-1968, Küsnacht/Zürich 1982, p. 25, no. 19, illustrated

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Notes: PROPERTY FROM THE HELGA AND WALTHER LAUFFS COLLECTION
The present relief Meta-Malevich belongs to a series of 15 works which Tinguely produced in 1954 shortly after his arrival in Paris. There he created his first abstract spatial constructions, including moving mechanisms that could be set in motion by the viewer. These early machines, which Tinguely called meta-mechanical devices, were characterised by their use of movement as a central element in their construction. Some of them took the form of series paraphrasing the idioms of other artists, for example the Meta-Herbin series (1954) or the Meta-Kandinsky series (1955). The prefix »Meta« describes the progressive character of the works. In the present work three rectangular forms are suspended on a surface. Tinguely draws formally on the paintings of the Russian father of Geometrical Abstraction Kasimir Malevich, while extending them through the dimension of time. Since the mechanism is located on the rear side and is invisible to the viewer, the lively character of the work only reveals itself once the electricity has been turned on. The movement of the various parts was based on a system of asynchronous gears, which resulted in each part moving at a different speed. The individual components of the picture assume constantly new positions and consequently produce ever-new combinations. What interested Tinguely was not just the movement itself but an image what was constantly modifying itself. For Malevich every form was a world. The works of artists of his generation were an expression of their beliefs, of their respective metaphysical convictions. These pioneers of modern art had been able to work with a stable, self-contained immutable system and Tinguely realised that in the changed situation of the post-war years the work of art could only retain its model character for intellectual and emotional orientation by mobilising and releasing form. The present work Meta-Malevich is a brilliant example of how Tinguely translated these ideas in the mid 1950s.