Broodthaers Marcel

Marcel Broodthaers, who was born in Sint-Gillis in 1924 and who died in Cologne in 1976, was a Belgian poet and visual artist. He was a painter, assemblage artist, photographer, poet and critic. Debuted as a poet and then went on to experiment in other fields. Participated in the activities of the surrealist group in Brussels after the Second World War. In 1957 he published his first collection of poems, "Mon livre d'Ogre", and in the same year he also made his first film, "La Clef de l'Horloge", a tribute to Kurt Schwitters. First individual exhibition at the Galerie Saint-Laurent in Brussels in 1964. Questioned, mocked and criticized 'art'. He made piles of shapes, eggs and coal before devoting himself to conceptual art. By means of banal objects and recovered material, he thus started to analyze the concept of 'work of art' and the art world. For him, art was a phenomenon, not an artifact of an artist that you put on a pedestal or hang from a nail. In that sense, he is one of the spiritual fathers of conceptual art. During the last years of his life he worked in Germany, where he was also appreciated. His work is exhibited in the Museum in Brussels. In 2000 the S.M.A.K in Ghent bought one of its Mussel pots. Retrospective at the Center for Fine Arts in Brussels in 2001. Mentioned in BAS I, II and Two centuries of signatures of Belgian artists. (Piron)