From October 10, 2025, to January 11, 2026, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting the world’s first comprehensive solo exhibition dedicated to a pioneer of the Dada movement, Suzanne Duchamp (1889–1963). The retrospective shows the multifaceted oeuvre of an artist whose work extended over a period of fifty years and who contributed to the development of Dadaism during the 1910s and ’20s. Although Duchamp’s works are represented in world-famous collections, and she had strong connections to major art world figures during her lifetime, her artistic significance has long been overshadowed by her brothers Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jacques Villon, as well as by her husband, Jean Crotti.

The retrospective contains around eighty works, some of which were rediscovered during the extensive research for the exhibition, and includes experimental collages, figurative representations, abstract paintings, photographs, and prints, as well as findings from the archives. Together, the works illustrate Duchamp’s artistic independence and freedom. The exhibition particularly focuses on her innovative treatment of materials and media, but also on her broad artistic range, which often defies art-historical categories. Humor and an air of mystery lend Duchamp’s art its characteristic voice. By the mid-1910s, she had developed a subtle pictorial language that was unique within the Dada movement for its combination of the readymade, poetic inscriptions, and geometric forms. In addition to her Dada works, the exhibition illuminates Duchamp's early Cubist interiors and urban landscapes, and late figurative paintings with frequent ironic undertones, as well as landscapes of the 1930s and ’40s and her late works, which verge on abstraction.

Developed in cooperation with Kunsthaus Zürich, the retrospective includes important loans from a number of international museums and public collections, such as MoMA in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, and important private collections such as the Bluff Collection and the Collection Francis M. Naumann and Marie T. Keller. The retrospective was conceived in close cooperation with the Association Duchamp Villon Crotti.

The exhibition Suzanne Duchamp: Retrospective is supported by the Dr. Marschner Stiftung and the Ernst Max von Grunelius-Stiftung, with additional support from the Fontana Stiftung, the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung, and the Schirn Liga.