Marcel Duchamp made irreverent, wildly inventive art that blazed new trails for the 20th-century avant-garde. He briefly worked in a Cubist mode and helped spur movements including Dada and Conceptualism. Though his practice spanned drawing, painting, and installation, Duchamp is perhaps most famous for his “readymade” sculptures: pieces composed of prefabricated objects such as a urinal, a shovel, or a bicycle wheel affixed to a wooden stool, which the artist situated in the middle of the exhibition space. Duchamp saw the readymade as an opportunity to free art from traditional confines of taste and beauty. He studied at Académie Julian before becoming involved in the avant-garde circles of New York and Paris. Duchamp also played tournament chess and, in the last decades of his life, worked in secret on a final installation, Étant donnés (1946–66). His pieces have sold for up to eight figures on the secondary market and belong in the collections of countless institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Staatliches Museum Schwerin, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos at 14, rue du Dragon in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Cahiers d’Art encompasses a publishing house, a gallery, and a revue. The Cahiers d’Art Revue was entirely unique when it was introduced, and it still is: a revue of contemporary art defined by its combination of striking typography and layout, abundant photography, and juxtaposition of ancient and modern art. Between the 1920s and the mid-1970s, Cahiers d’Art published ninety-seven issues of the Revue and more than fifty books on fine art and architecture, as well as the thirty-three volume catalogue raisonné of Pablo Picasso. After its acquisition and relaunch in 2012 by Staffan Ahrenberg, an editorial board comprised of Sam Keller, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Isabela Mora, and Staffan Ahrenberg was created. Cahiers d’Art has since published several new Revues and art books devoted to Ellsworth Kelly, Rosemarie Trockel, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Thomas Schütte, Gabriel Orozco, Joan Miró, Lucas Arruda, Ai Weiwei, Arthur Jafa, Frank Gehry, Christo, and others. From the 1920s till today, Cahiers d’Art has maintained a gallery, exhibiting the artists it publishes. Cahiers d’Art continues to fulfill its mission to be the cultural bridge between the avant-garde of Picasso, Duchamp, and Le Corbusier, and the leading artists and architects of our time.