Nude Descending a Staircase No 2, 1912 by Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp was an iconoclastic figure on the one hand deriding the pretensions of art and on the other exploring its possibilities. He is seen as the godfather of modern art, predicting movements such as Conceptualism, Minimalism and even Pop Art. He was one of the key exponents of the avant-garde and was instrumental in raising the profile of the Surrealists in France and the United States.