Since his two hammer attacks on
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain urinal in 1993 and 2006, French artist Pierre Pinoncelli (1929-2021) has been known the world over for this
iconoclastic and subversive act. This resounding artistic attack obscured the rest of his career in the eyes of the public. Stopping painting in 1966 to devote himself to
happenings, Pinoncelli has never ceased to denounce the contradictions of our society. Pinoncelli is the man who sprayed André Malraux with red paint in 1969, who robbed a bank to protest against apartheid in 1975, who publicly mutilated himself in Colombia to free Ingrid Bétancourt and denounce the violence of the FARCS in 2002. Often motivated by political demands, Pinoncelli went to the end of his ideas and expressed himself by often shocking gestures, which question us.
