Fernandez Arman (1928-2005) was a French sculptor and visual artist active in France and the United States. He studied at the Ècole du Louvre in Paris. Arman belonged to the so-called "new realists", a group created by Pierre Restany and Yves Klein and others. The neo-realists depicted mass-produced everyday objects and integrated them into their works. Restany argues that "neorealism" observes sociological reality without any controversial intentions. This could possibly open up an understanding of Arman's work. During the late 1950s, the focus of his work shifted from traditional painting and sculpture to the "readymade" and the object itself. Readymade denotes an everyday, often mass-produced object, in the art world often called "objet trouvé", which an artist has selected and elevated to art. Arman is best known for his sculptures depicting compositions of objects, often musical instruments, such as saxophones and violins.
