Major Swiss-German artist of the Surrealist movement — painter, sculptor and creator of objects. She is famous for her provocative object “Object (Luncheon in Fur)”, a fur-covered cup that became an icon of 20th-century art.
Méret Oppenheim
Méret Elisabeth Oppenheim
6 min read
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1913 in Berlin, into a German-Swiss family
- Created in 1936 the “Luncheon in Fur” (a cup, saucer and spoon covered in fur), acquired by the MoMA in New York
- Associated with the Surrealists in Paris from the 1930s onward (André Breton, Man Ray)
- Received in 1975 the Grand Prize of the City of Basel for her body of work
- Died in 1985 in Basel, Switzerland
Works & Achievements
Cup, saucer and spoon covered in fur, the most famous work of surrealist objects, acquired by MoMA right after its creation.
A pair of white shoes tied up and served on a platter like a roast fowl, an ironic subversion of feminine roles.
Photographic series in which she poses nude behind a printing press, an iconic image of Parisian surrealism.
A meal served on the body of a nude woman, a performance presented at the EROS surrealist exhibition in Paris.
A self-portrait in the form of an X-ray, showing her skull adorned with jewellery, a meditation on identity and mortality.
A fountain-sculpture shaped like a spiralling column overgrown with vegetation, installed in the centre of Bern.
Anecdotes
In 1936, while sitting at the Café de Flore in Paris with Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, Méret Oppenheim was wearing a fur-covered metal bracelet of her own design. Picasso joked that you could cover anything with fur, and she replied: “Even this cup and saucer!” From that quip was born her most famous work, a teacup entirely sheathed in fur.
The title “Object (Luncheon in Fur)” did not come from the artist but from André Breton, the leader of the Surrealists, who alluded to two scandalous nineteenth-century works: Manet's “Luncheon on the Grass” and Sacher-Masoch's “Venus in Furs.” The piece was bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as early as 1936, when Méret was only 23 years old.
While very young, in Paris, she posed for the photographer Man Ray, who captured her nude behind a printing press in the series “Veiled Erotic” (1933). These images made her a celebrated figure of Surrealism long before her own work became widely known.
After her meteoric success, Oppenheim went through nearly twenty years of crisis and self-doubt, destroying works and questioning her talent. She eventually overcame this depression and won great recognition in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1975, while accepting the Art Prize of the City of Basel, she delivered a now-famous speech on the freedom and androgyny of the creative spirit, refusing to be confined to a “feminine art.” In it she asserted that creation has neither sex nor gender.
Primary Sources
Picasso and Dora Maar were admiring my fur-covered bracelet. Picasso said you could cover anything in fur, and I replied: even this cup and saucer.
Freedom is not given to you, you have to take it. The mind is androgynous and has no sex; no creation is masculine or feminine in itself.
Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure): cup, saucer, and spoon covered in Chinese gazelle fur, acquired by the museum in 1936.
Key Places
District of Berlin where Méret Oppenheim was born in 1913, into a cultured family of German and Swiss origin.
Swiss village in Ticino where her grandmother, the writer Lisa Wenger, lived, and where Méret spent part of her childhood in an artistic environment.
Capital where she settled in 1932, joined the Surrealists, and created her most famous works. The heart of her career as a young artist.
Swiss city where she lived and worked for a long time, and home to her fountain-sculpture inaugurated in 1983.
Swiss city tied to her childhood, which awarded her its art prize in 1975 and where she died in 1985.
Typical Objects
Cup, saucer, and spoon entirely sheathed in gazelle fur, which make the object unusable and unsettling. It is the ultimate icon of the Surrealist art-object.
A metal jewel covered in fur that she wore in Paris and that inspired her famous teacup. It blended elegance with animal strangeness.
A pair of white pumps tied together and presented on a platter like a roasted fowl, topped with paper frills. An ironic subversion of the codes of femininity and bourgeois cooking.
The painter's tools, which she used throughout her life alongside her objects. Her painting explored dreams, nature, and inner visions.
Playful objects tied to games, disguise, and Surrealist parties. Oppenheim loved to blur identities and play with androgyny.
School Curriculum
Vocabulary & Tags
Key Vocabulary
Daily Life
Morning
In the morning, in his Parisian and later Bernese studio, Méret Oppenheim would write down the dreams from the night before, an essential source of her Surrealist inspiration. She drew and worked out her ideas for objects and paintings before actually getting started on them.
Afternoon
The afternoon was devoted to hands-on work: oil painting, assembling objects, searching for unusual materials such as fur, metal, or bone. She experimented constantly, blending craftsmanship and imagination.
Evening
In the evening, especially during her youth in Paris, she would meet up with the Surrealists in the cafés of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain. There they discussed art, poetry, and politics, and invented collective games like the exquisite corpse.
Food
A woman of her time living between France and Switzerland, she shared café and bistro meals: bread, cheeses, wine, simple dishes. Food, as in “The Banquet,” sometimes became material for art and provocation.
Clothing
She favored a personal, nonconformist elegance, mixing modern clothing with invented accessories like her fur bracelet. Rejecting rigid notions of femininity, she gladly played with androgyny in her appearance.
Housing
She lived in modest studios and apartments in Paris, then in Switzerland in Bern and Basel. Her living spaces were places of creation, cluttered with materials, sketches, and works in progress.
Historical Timeline
Period Vocabulary
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Le Déjeuner en fourrure (Objet)
1936
Ma gouvernante – My Nurse
1936
Érotique voilée (en collaboration avec Man Ray)
1933
Le Festin de printemps (Frühlingsfest)
1959
Radiographie du crâne de M.O.
1964
