Jean Tinguely's kinetic sculptures were built to destroy themselves, malfunction, and rust — a deliberate rebuke of permanence that makes his appearance on a collectible silver coin an irony he would almost certainly have appreciated, or mocked. The 2025 issue marks the centenary of his birth in Fribourg in 1925. Swissmint has leaned into Swiss contemporary art figures in recent years, but Tinguely is an unusually sharp choice: his most famous work, Homage to New York, self-destructed in the garden of MoMA in March 1960 after roughly 27 minutes.
Jean Tinguely's kinetic sculptures were built to destroy themselves, malfunction, and rust — a deliberate rebuke of permanence that makes his appearance on a collectible silver coin an irony he would almost certainly have appreciated, or mocked. The 2025 issue marks the centenary of his birth in Fribourg in 1925. Swissmint has leaned into Swiss contemporary art figures in recent years, but Tinguely is an unusually sharp choice: his most famous work, Homage to New York, self-destructed in the garden of MoMA in March 1960 after roughly 27 minutes.