Although Duchamp’s works are represented in world-famous collections and she enjoyed excellent connections during her lifetime, her artistic significance long remained overshadowed by her brothers Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Villon, as well as her husband Jean Crotti.

The retrospective shows around seventy works, some of which were rediscovered as the result of extensive research, including experimental collages, figurative representations, abstract paintings, and historical photographs, as well as important finds from the archives. Their presentation as an ensemble shows clearly her artistic independence and freedom. The focus of the show lies on Duchamp’s innovative treatment of materials and media in particular, but also on her broad artistic range, which often defies art-historical categories. Humor and an air of mystery lend Duchamp’s art its characteristic voice.

As of the mid-1910s, she created a subtle pictorial language which was unique within the Dadaist movement by combining aspects of the readymade, poetic inscriptions, and geometric forms. In works like “Broken and Restored Multiplication” (1918–19) and “Solitude-Funnel” (1921), she investigated the boundaries and extensions of different media and produced graphically memorable yet minimalist compositions with alluring titles like “Workshop of Joy” (1920).

In addition to her Dadaist works, the exhibition illuminates Duchamp’s early Cubist interiors and urban landscapes, her late figural paintings which often reflect ironic undertones, the landscapes of the 1930s and 1940s, and her late works, which verge on abstraction. For the retrospective, the SCHIRN was able to assemble important loans from numerous international museums, including MoMA in New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute in Chicago, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France and Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris, Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, and important private collections such as the Bluff Collection and the Collection Francis M. Naumann and Marie T. Keller. The retrospective was created in close cooperation with the Association Duchamp Villon Crotti.

An exhibition in cooperation with Kunsthaus Zürich.