“Nobody will give you freedom. You have to take it.”
(Meret Oppenheim)
In May 1932, Meret Oppenheim met the artists Alberto Giacometti and Hans Arp in Paris, who were enthusiastic about her work and invited her to exhibit at the ‘Salon des Surindépendants’.
In the autumn of 1933, she met Max Ernst, with whom she had a love affair that lasted until the following year. After Man Ray photographed her in 1933 for the ‘Érotique voilée’ series, she gained a reputation as the ‘muse of the surrealists’.
She moved in the circle around André Breton and Marcel Duchamp and created some of her most famous art objects, including ‘Déjeuner en fourrure’ (Breakfast in Fur) from 1936 – a fur-covered coffee cup (with a saucer and spoon), which was shown at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London that same year – and Ma Gouvernante (My Nanny), which was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
She then lived and worked in Basel and Bern, and from 1958 she created works for which she often drew on sketches, designs and ideas from her time in Paris. From 1972 she lived and worked alternately in Paris, Bern and Carona (Ticino).
Shortly before her death, she was made a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. On 15 November 1985, the day of the vernissage of her book Caroline, Meret Oppenheim died in Basel. She was laid to rest in the Ticino artists' village of Carona, where she had lived for many years.