Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 caused a scandal at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. He then gave up conventional painting and invented the readymade, everyday objects chosen and signed as art, most famously Fountain, a urinal submitted to an exhibition in 1917. His other major works are The Large Glass and the secret late tableau Étant donnés, and he spent many years mostly playing chess. He is seen as the founder of Conceptual Art, and Tate holds replicas of Fountain and The Large Glass.