Marcel Broodthaers

Overview
Marcel Broodthaer_installationview_projection_1970
Marcel Broodthaers, Projections, 1970-1974, Installation view at Erna Hecey Gallery, Luxembourg, 6 December 1997 – 31 January 1998

(b. 1924 in Brussels, Belgium, died in 1976 in Cologne, Germany)

 

Marcel Broodthaers worked primarily as a poet until the age of 40, when he turned to the visual arts. Over the next 12 years, his work retained a poetic quality and a sense of humor that balanced its conceptual framework. Broodthaers continued to invent ways to give material form to language while working across mediums - poetry, sculpture, painting, artist's books, printmaking, and film. From 1968 to 1972, he operated the Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles), a traveling museum dedicated not to his work as an artist but to the role of the institution itself and the function of art in society. In the final years of his life, Broodthaers created immersive "décors," large-scale displays in which examples of his past work were often unified with objects borrowed for the occasion. His work, despite its brief duration proved enormously influential to future generations of artists.

Biography
marcel broodthaers_defense de fumer_video_1969-70_erna hecey gallery
Marcel Broodthaers, Défense de fumer, 1969-70, Installation view at Erna Hecey Gallery, Brussels

Recent Solo exhibitions include: K20, Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (2017); The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2016); Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2015); La Monnaie de Paris, France (2015); Herbert Foundation, Ghent, Belgium (2015); Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2015); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2014); Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, Bologna, Italy (2014); Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2014); S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium (2006).

 

Group exhibitions amongst others at Kanal-Centre Pompidou, Brussels, Belgium (2018); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2018); Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels (2017); Biennale de Lyon, France (2017); Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany (2017); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016); ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany (2016); Expo Milan 2015, Triennale di Milano, Italy (2015); Giardini Central Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, Italy (2015); The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2014); Manifesta 9, European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Genk, Belgium (2012).

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