The French object artist, painter and sculptor Armand Pierre Fernandez was born in Nice in 1928. He studied there from 1946 to 1949 at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs, and in 1949 he enrolled in the École du Louvre in Paris. In 1954 he produced his first Cachets: the use of stamps led to the idea of repetition, which would become characteristic of his entire oeuvre. Beginning in 1959/1960 Arman filled Perspex boxes with the contents of wastebaskets or agglomerations of identical objects (accumulations). These were followed in 1961 by the Coupes and Colères: individual pieces of objects, like musical instruments, were cut up and destroyed, then rearranged or cast in Perspex. Arman was an important founding member of the Nouveaux Réalistes artists’ group, founded by Pierre Restany in 1960. Among its members were Yves Klein, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Raymond Hains. The movement focused artistically on banal, everyday culture. An important point of reference for Arman was Dadaism, whose techniques he adopted and expanded. His works comment on the art market and consumer behaviour. Arman died in New York in 2005.
