Meret Oppenheim

Meret Oppenheim was born in 1913 in Berlin and grew up in Switzerland. As a teenager she moved to Paris, but didn't last long in art school before meeting pioneering Surrealists Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp and Man Ray, and becoming enmeshed in their world. She was contributing to their shows by 1933, and had her first solo exhibition in 1936 in Basel. An eventual return to school was followed by deep depression and a dry spell of more than 20 years. Reentering public life again in the period...See more

Meret Oppenheim was born in 1913 in Berlin and grew up in Switzerland. As a teenager she moved to Paris, but didn't last long in art school before meeting pioneering Surrealists Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp and Man Ray, and becoming enmeshed in their world. She was contributing to their shows by 1933, and had her first solo exhibition in 1936 in Basel. An eventual return to school was followed by deep depression and a dry spell of more than 20 years. Reentering public life again in the period that followed, she observed that "Nobody gives you freedom, you have to take it." Oppenheim died in Switzerland in 1985. See less