Flo Peters Gallery Shop

After her marriage to Daniel Spoerri, Vera Mercer was part of the Parisian artistic avant-garde of the early 1960s; She portrayed Marcel Duchamp and Robert Filliou, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely and again and again Spoerri. In parallel to these portraits, she also photographed the old Paris market halls shortly before they were demolished. Here she first encountered a topic that has occupied her ever since: food such as fruits and vegetables, meat and fish in whole or in parts - and the later arrangement in the studio at home. With her still lifes of flowers, fruits and animals, Vera Mercer goes beyond contemporary art fashions and rather makes references to art history. Classic vanitas motifs such as skulls or half-burnt candles symbolically remind - as a memento mori - of one's own mortality.