Collection Online of Museum Tinguely


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Jean Tinguely


Mautz II

1963

Material / technique: Steel pedestal, steel wheel and plates, rubber belts, golf ball, electric motor (wheel fork and rim with pedals from tricycle, mudguard)
Size: 42 x 82 x 32 cm
Inv.Number: 11192
Catalog: Bischofberger 0315
Creditline: Museum Tinguely, Basel

The use and processing of scrap iron and objects of everyday use connects Tinguely with the zeitgeist of the New York avant-garde, including his American friends Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers and Claes Oldenburg. He did not however aim only at satirical or Dadaist effects with his use of waste materials, but rather often chose them for their faded beauty. For Tinguely, these objects exuded a singular poetic power that continually fired his creative imagination. He nevertheless would truly come into his own in the field of motor-driven kinetic art instead, gradually departing in the course of the 1960s from the direct use of ready-mades and scrap material with its unmistakable signs of rust and decay.

Pictures in our Collection

The following applies for uses of pictures in relation to our collection:
Museum Tinguely does not own any copyright in works by Jean Tinguely or other artists in the collection. The clarification of these rights and payment in respect of them is a matter for the applicant. In Switzerland, the collecting society responsible for this is ProLitteris, Zurich (link website: www.prolitteris.ch). Museum Tinguely undertakes no liability for third party claims arising from infringement of copyright and personality rights.

Collection of Museum Tinguely

Works and work groups belonging to all phases of Jean Tinguely’s career are to be found in the museum's collection. Along with selected temporary loans, they afford the visitor an extensive view of the artist’s career. Apart from sculptures, the collection furthermore comprises a large number of drawings and letter-drawings, documents, exhibition posters, catalogues and documentation such as photographs. In the measure of the possible all the exhibits are accessible to the public and regularly shown, be it in the permanent collection or as loans to exhibitions worldwide.

The museum’s collections are the result of a generous donation by the artist’s widow, Niki de Saint Phalle, made on the occasion of its foundation, a donation of works from the Roche collection, as well as several other gifts and acquisitions.

>> Biography of Jean Tinguely

>> History of the collection