Marcel Broodthaers

An accomplished poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator and artist, Brussels-born Marcel Broodthaers is known for his intelligent and illustrative works which often explore the relationships between language, images and objects. As a young poet, Broodthaers was exposed to a group of Belgian Surrealists, including René Magritte, who passed him a copy of Mallarmé’s Un Coup de Dés. Working as a journalist and writer, in addition to experimenting with film and photography, Broodthaers was relatively unknown until he began his foray into visual arts in 1964. His first major work, Pense-Bête, consisted of unsold copiesof his books encased in plaster, and established Broodthaers highly conceptual and humorous style. Juxtaposing various images and objects to create visual puns, Broodthaers worked in a wide variety of media throughout the rest of his career. Often cited as a source of inspiration for artists such as Richard Prince and Rachel Harrison, Broodthaers’ unique style and conceptualized installations cement his legacy as a voracious wordsmith and innovative creative.

Throughout his career Broodthaers was the subject of several important exhibitions including Eulogy of the Subject at Kunstmuseum Basel and The Angelus of Daumier at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. After his death in 1976, the first posthumous retrospective was put on in 1980 by Tate Gallery in London. This shown has been followed over the years by many others including Kunsthalle Bern, Germany, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Aspen Art Museum and Fridericianum, Kassel. A major retrospective was exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art New York in 2016 and will travel to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.