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Jean Tinguely
Cyclop - La Tête - der Kopf
Letter-drawing to Pontus Hulten
1969
Material / technique: Ballpoint pen and felt-tip pen on paper
Size: 42.5 x 30.5 cm
Inv.Number: 4133
Creditline: Museum Tinguely, Basel
Walking through the forest, the visitor suddenly comes upon a nearly 23-metre-high sculpture set amidst the trees. It looks like a surreal one-eyed creature lumbering through the forest, sporting a huge, moveable iron ear by Bernhard Luginbühl. Within a niche inside “Cyclop”, Daniel Spoerri, inventor of the “trap picture”, recreated his first live-in studio in Paris, a tiny chambre de bonne rotated ninety degrees, while Seppi Imhof, Tinguely’s longstanding assistant, welded onto it an adaptation of Schwitters’ “Merzbau” in the form of a black-painted iron structure.
Pictures in our Collection
The following applies for uses of pictures in relation to our collection:
Museum Tinguely does not own any copyright in works by Jean Tinguely or other artists in the collection. The clarification of these rights and payment in respect of them is a matter for the applicant. In Switzerland, the collecting society responsible for this is ProLitteris, Zurich (link website: www.prolitteris.ch). Museum Tinguely undertakes no liability for third party claims arising from infringement of copyright and personality rights.
Collection of Museum Tinguely
Works and work groups belonging to all phases of Jean Tinguely’s career are to be found in the museum's collection. Along with selected temporary loans, they afford the visitor an extensive view of the artist’s career. Apart from sculptures, the collection furthermore comprises a large number of drawings and letter-drawings, documents, exhibition posters, catalogues and documentation such as photographs. In the measure of the possible all the exhibits are accessible to the public and regularly shown, be it in the permanent collection or as loans to exhibitions worldwide.
The museum’s collections are the result of a generous donation by the artist’s widow, Niki de Saint Phalle, made on the occasion of its foundation, a donation of works from the Roche collection, as well as several other gifts and acquisitions.
>> Biography of Jean Tinguely
>> History of the collection