L’Esprit de Tinguely is partial a book about other books. Much was written in the past on the artist and for this retrospective exhibition it seemed suitable to make a compilation of old en new texts. This was translated into the design. When going through the book it constantly changes character, reflecting the different periods in his career. The main typographic theme was based on car racing esthetics. Well known for his cranky looking ’steam punk’ machines, Tinguely was an avid car racing fan and used to drive himself on the circuit.

Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics. Tinguely’s art satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society.

Tinguely grew up in Basel, but moved to France in 1952 with his first wife Swiss artist Eva Aeppli,[1] to pursue a career in art. He belonged to the Parisian avantgarde in the mid-twentieth century and was one of the artists who signed the New Realist’s manifesto (Nouveau réalisme) in 1960.

His best-known work, a self-destroying sculpture titled Homage to New York (1960), only partially self-destructed at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, although his later work, Study for an End of the World No. 2 (1962), detonated successfully in front of an audience gathered in the desert outside Las Vegas.

Tinguely married fellow Swiss artist Eva Aeppli in 1951. In 1971, Tinguely married his second wife, Niki de Saint Phalle.