Meta drawing, 1974

Jean Tinguely was a Swiss sculptor and painter who was most well known for his creations of kinetic art, known technically as meta-mechanics, in the grand Dada tradition. Jean Tinguely’s basic purpose for his art is to lampoon the unconscious over-creation of material items in modern industry. Jean Tinguely’s best known work was Homage to New York, which he designed to destroy itself. However, it did not completely self-destruct in its exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. A later work,Study for an End of the World No. 2, was successful in its self-destruction when shown for an audience in the desert near Las Vegas. Some of his more well known public works include Chaos I, in Columbus Indiana; the Tinguely Fountain in Basel; the Jo Siffert Fountain in Fribourg, Switzerland; La Cascade, a sculpture in Charlotte, North Carolina; and a number of other metamatic generative sculptures made in the 1950s. (Artist website)