Ben Vautier, who now lives and works in Nice, was born in Naples, Italy, on 18 July 1935. After years of moving from place to place, his parents took the family to Nice in 1949.
Inspired by Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp and the Nouveaux Réalistes, Ben Vautier developed a distinctive personal style with leanings towards Dada. During the latter half of the 1950s, Vautier – years before Andy Warhol did anything of the kind – produced work based on variations on a highly simplified banana motif. In addition, Vautier worked with configurations composed of multiple individual parts recalling Jean Tinguely’s machines. By now Ben Vautier had found what would become his trade mark: instructions and explanations written in cursive writing on
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Ben Vautier, who now lives and works in Nice, was born in Naples, Italy, on 18 July 1935. After years of moving from place to place, his parents took the family to Nice in 1949.
Inspired by Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp and the Nouveaux Réalistes, Ben Vautier developed a distinctive personal style with leanings towards Dada. During the latter half of the 1950s, Vautier – years before Andy Warhol did anything of the kind – produced work based on variations on a highly simplified banana motif. In addition, Vautier worked with configurations composed of multiple individual parts recalling Jean Tinguely’s machines.
By now Ben Vautier had found what would become his trade mark: instructions and explanations written in cursive writing on objects.
