Daniel Spoerri was an important figure in Nouveau Réalisme. Drawing on his background as a dancer and choreographer, from the 1950s onwards he developed a wide-ranging practice encompassing assemblage, collage, performance and artists’ books.
He became best known for his tableaux-pièges, or ‘snare pictures’, in which everyday objects and the remains of, for example, a meal are fixed in place exactly as they were left. By literally preserving such situations, Spoerri transformed the everyday into art.
