Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp's early figure paintings were influenced by Matisse and Fauvism, but by 1911 he had developed a personal, mechanized variant of Cubism; his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) caused a sensation at the 1913 New York Armory Show. Around 1913 he began making readymades, ordinary manufactured objects designated as art by the artist's choice alone, a radical gesture that became foundational to Dada thought on both sides of the Atlantic. Working in New York alongside Man Ray and Francis Picabia, and in contact with Alfred Stieglitz's circle, Duchamp became a central figure in shaping how New York's own contribution to Dada was later understood historically. His work fundamentally challenged the boundary between art object and everyday object, a challenge central to Dada's anti-art stance.