Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp

Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp

(France, 28.7.1887 - 2.10.1968 USA)

Marcel Duchamp was a famous painter, sculptor, chess player and writer.

"Marcel Duchamp is considered as a very notable artist of the 20th century. His peculiarity, beyond his unconventional thought and subversive actions, was that he was so infatuated with the game of chess that he almost completely excluded artistic activities. His chess games can be replayed in Internet.
One of his most famous quote about the subject, and the more relevant for chess composers, is the following:

"The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."

In 1932, Duchamp and Vitaly Halberstadt to publish "L'opposition et cases conjuguées sont réconciliées" (Opposition and corresponding squares are reconciled)." 

Source: chesscomposers.blogspot.com