Méret Oppenheim

About

Méret Oppenheim was a German-born Swiss artist renowned for her Surrealist works, most famously Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) (1936), a fur-covered teacup, saucer, and spoon that became an icon of the movement after its acquisition by MoMA. Born in Berlin to a Jewish German psychiatrist father and Swiss mother, she moved to Paris at 18 to study art, where she befriended Surrealists like Man Ray, André Breton, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, and Jean Arp. She modeled for Man Ray, appeared in exhibitions such as the 1933 Salon des Surindépendants and 1936 Galerie Ratton show, and contributed her childhood equation 'X = Rabbit' to Breton's Surrealist Manifesto. Early fame overshadowed her career, leading to a creative crisis and depression lasting nearly two decades after fleeing Paris in 1937 amid rising Nazi threats, during which she studied art restoration in Basel.[1][2][3][4][5]

Surrealism