Meret Oppenheim found fame with a furry cup—her disconcerting double entendre, Object (1936), a fur-covered cup, saucer and teaspoon—which was snapped up by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a prime example of Surrealism. But the artist resisted being pigeonholed as a sculptor or a Surrealist. “I always did what I felt like doing,” she once said. “Committing to a particular style would’ve bored me to death.”
Oppenheim spent part of her childhood in Basel, having moved to the area with her Swiss mother when her German father was conscripted during the First World War. She came back in 1937, escaping her notoriety in Paris and becoming a painting conservator to earn a living. Oppenheim lived in Basel and Bern for the rest of her life, and a street and building are named after her near Basel’s main train station.
This small exhibition shows the full range of Oppenheim’s work, from melancholy oil paintings made during the war years to her elegant abstract sculptures. In her later years, she even returned to Surrealism. Eichhörnchen (squirrel, 1970)—a beer glass with a squirrel’s tail—is just as witty and unsettling as Object. Meanwhile, Das Auge der Mona Lisa (1967) shares her friend Marcel Duchamp’s interest in the iconic painting—here condensed into a single disembodied eye.
• Meret Oppenheim, Hauser & Wirth Basel, until 19 July
