Fernandez Arman, Sculpture Sliced Bronze Violin in Multiple Plexiglas, 42/99

Arman (civil name Armand Pierre Fernandez, 1928 - 2005) was a French-US-American object artist and co-founder of Nouveau Réalisme - a style that took up ideas from Dadaism and is therefore also called Neo-Dadaism. Real objects from everyday life are declared Ready-Mades, so that found objects and rubbish are arranged into assemblages, accumulations and collages. He became artist friends with Yves Klein and Claude Pascal and was also artistically influenced by the work of the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters and by his encounter with the art critic Pierre Restany, who later became the theoretician of Nouveau Réalisme. After a trip to Europe in 1947, attended the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. From 1949 he changed to the École du Louvre