Arman is born in Nice in 1928, as Armand Pierre Fernandez. His father, an antiquarian from Spain, teaches him to paint and photograph. From 1946 to 1949 he attends art college in Nice. In that period, he gets acquainted with Claude Pascal and Yves Klein, whom he will remain friends with. In 1949, he goes to Paris to study art history. Subsequently, he serves in the military, and from 1953, he can fully devote himself to the visual arts.
n 1958, Arman is successful with his ‘cachets’: ink prints on paper, made with stamps, inspired by the work of Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. In the subsequent period, he develops two new concepts: the ‘accumulation’ and the ‘poubelle’. The ‘accumulation’ stands for a collection of identical objects, like musical instruments or painting supplies, often captured in a plexiglass case. Later on, he uses this concept when creating sculptures, sometimes of monumental size. With the other concept, the ‘poubelle’ (garbage), Arman fills a Parisian art gallery in 1960. Thus he creates ‘Le Plein’, as a kind of counterpoint to ‘Le Vide’, an exhibition by Yves Klein, two years before, in the same art gallery.
In 1961, Arman makes his debut in the United States, the country which will become his second home. He dies in 2005, almost 77 years old, in New York.
