In 1936 the young Meret Oppenheim met Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar at the Café de Flore in Paris wearing a fur covered bracelet. The bracelet – which the artist fashioned using a brass tube – so delighted her companions that a conversation ensued during which Oppenheim’s best known work, a fur-covered cup, saucer and spoon, was conceived. André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, christened this Le déjeuner en fourrure (Lunch in fur, 1936,) and to this day it remains one of the most frequently cited Surrealist pieces. Meret Oppenheim’s sketches of the original bracelet note that it should be gilt, as it is produced here. Her own version was given as a present to Aube Breton Elléoüet, Breton’s daughter.
Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985) was an artist like no other. She found early fame with the Surrealists, but she would transcend that group to become one of the most important Swiss cultural figures of the 20th century…