The Loveliest Vowel Empties: Collected Poems

The Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim (1913-1985) was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg and died in Basel. Best known for Object, her fur-lined teacup from 1936, her expansive body of work included painting, works on paper, and object constructions, as well as jewelry designs, public sculpture commissions, and poetry. From 2021-2023 her work was the subject of a major exhibition, the first transatlantic retrospective of her work, a collaboration between MoMA, The Menil Collection, and Kunstmuseum Bern.

"The Loveliest Vowel Empties presents for the first time in English the collected poems of legendary Swiss Surrealist Meret Oppenheim, printed with facing-page originals in German and French. Oppenheim's poetry--49 poems written between 1933 and 1980--moves beyond Surrealism to inhabit a voice all her own, with imagery and sound that, as the Herald Tribune wrote, 'express witty and poetic responses to the surprises of life.' A key figure of the Paris art scene in the 1930s, Oppenheim moved in a circle that included Andér Breton, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Elsa Schiaparelli. Writing for the Village Voice about her work, Gary Indiana noted that 'the singularity of Meret Oppenheim's work is such that nothing seems dated... the range of the work and its quirky self-assurance are striking.' The publication of her collected poems coincides with a major retrospective exhibition of her artwork at the Museum of Modern Art in New York"--Provided by publisher.