Daniel Spoerri is an artist who playfully reorganizes the consumer goods and cultic objects, revaluates the visual knowledge of the 20th century. He connects objects that do not belong together. He puts the known symbols into new context by functionally alienating them.
He was born in Galati in 1930. He has lived in Switzerland since 1942. He began to intensively deal with fine art as the artist himself calls it "metteur en scene d'objets" in 1960. His first pictures called 'Trap Pictures' /Tableaux Piege/ were displayed first in 1960. His friendship with Jean Tinguely and an experience with Robert Filliouval in Coppenhagen led Spoerri to form the so-called 'Trap Pictures'. He exhibited the leftovers of the last supper he had with Filliou in Copenhagen as homage. He fixed the objects he found, the plates that were left behind after meals, with the silverware and the leftovers, stubs, and personal belongings left behind. He turned these over with 90o to exhibit them.
It was around that time when he joined the "Nouveau Réalisme". He opened a restaurant in 1968 under his own name in Düsseldorf downtown. Soon after, he founded the EAT ART EDITION. His culinary banquettes were extremely popular in the seventies. He advertised the banquette by which a photo galley was inaugurated under the title "Hommage a Karl Marx". He invited all the namesakes of Karl Marx from around the Rhine. The students of Spoerri decorated the room with small dunes besides the small tables, candles, and flitters.
Around 1978/79 Spoerri worked out a conception named "Musée sentimental". As the result of this, he could open exhibitions in Cologne in the Kunstverein "Le Musée sentimental de Cologne", in Berlin titled "Le Musée sentimental Prusse". He exhibited the pencil of Heinrich Böll, the hat of the bishop Frings, and the tools of a lady working in an erotic center. As the professor of the Werkschule of Cologne he created an environment titled "Alice im Wunderland" (Alice in Wonderland) with his students in 1981.
In the 90's he moved to Toscana. With the help of a foundation, he formed a statue park with seventy statues under the name of "il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri" and now he lives and works in Switzerland.