Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) Man Ray (1890-1976) Biography
Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968) painter, sculptor and writer, was born in Blainville, France, into an artistic family, and would himself become one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Throughout his life he refused to accept standard ideas of what constituted an art object, and continually rejected the conventions of an established art and exhibition system considered by many to be essential to achieving fame and financial success. After studying at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1905, Duchamp began painting in a post-impressionist style, but then adopted a more cubist technique. By 1913 he had abandoned traditional painting altogether, developing a more conceptual approach to the artistic process through his ready-mades: common objects, including urinals, bottle racks and other everyday objects, sometimes altered, which he presented at exhibitions as works of art. art. They were rejected by critics in the art world, but they had a revolutionary impact on many contemporary circles of avant-garde painters and sculptors, and made Duchamp a famous figure. It was only in the last decade of his life that Duchamp's work became famous to a wide audience. He was 76 years old when the first retrospective of his work was held at the Pasadena Museum of Art in Los Angeles, CA, in 1963. After his death in 1968, major exhibitions of his work were held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the Musée National d'Art Moderne and the Center Pompidou in Paris, and at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Duchamp can be considered one of the most important art historical figures of the 20th century, participating in the Dada and Surrealist groups during his lifetime and influencing Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art in the 1960s and 1970s.
