FILLIOU, ROBERT

Robert Filliou (17 January 1926 Sauve, France – 2 December 1987 Les Eyzies, France) was a Fluxus artist, filmmaker, sculpture and happening artist.

Robert Filliou joined the Resistance to the German occupiers 1943, and became a member of the Communist Party of France during the war.
In 1946, he left France and emigrated to the United States where from 1946 to 1948 he worked for the Coca-Cola Company.

In 1949 he studied economics in Los Angeles. Then moved to South Korea in 1951 and worked there for the UN reconstruction agency for Korea.

In 1954 Filliou moved to Egypt, then lived in Spain from 1955 to 1957, met his wife, Marianne Staffels, in Denmark, and finally returned to his home country France in 1959.

In the winter of 1963, Filliou, together with his friend Joachim Pfeufer, developed the POIPOIDROM project, a linguistically inspired mixture of object, installation and performance, which sets a chain of (meaning) questions in dialogue

Robert Filliou lived in New York in 1967 and moved to Düsseldorf one year later, which was then one of the centers of the Fluxus movment. In 1977, Filliou lived temporarily in Canada where he produced several videos. From 1980 to 1984 he was a guest professor at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts.