A carefully compiled monograph of the 20th century about a fundamental artist, of whom people wrote that his finest masterpiece was his actual life, his lifestyle and the way he spent his time.
Fountain in 1917 or the mock portrait of Mona Lisa with moustache and goatee and the inscription L.H.O.O.Q. in 1919 must be two of the most famous artworks of the 20th century, invented by the crazy genius of by Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential and troublesome artists of the last century. Thanks to Duchamp, drastic changes took place in the world of art, with the abandoning of traditional painting in favour of forms and tools which were not only unusual but completely extraneous to artistic creation hitherto. Always at odds with what people did and anticipating what would follow, from 1913 onwards, although he continued to paint, Duchamp substituted ‘painterly’ effects with technical drawing. A champion of Dadaism and Surrealism, he launched Conceptual Art, creating his ‘ready-mades’ and other assembled devices. His ‘ready-mades’ were so innovative that they changed the actual way of creating art. In Duchamp’s own famous words, “it is the observers who make the pictures”. Just the idea is enough, even for a urinal or an iron, for us to say: “This is art”.