born May 22, 1925, Fribourg, Switz.
died Aug. 30, 1991, Bern
Swiss sculptor and experimental artist.
As a student of painting and sculpture in Basel, he showed interest in movement as an artistic medium, and in 1953 he moved to Paris and began to construct sophisticated kinetic sculpture s. He created a sensation when his self-destroying Homage to New York (1960) failed to self-destruct at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; his Study for an End of the World (1961) detonated successfully. Tinguely's art satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society and expressed his conviction that the essence of both life and art consists of continuous change, movement, and instability.