Raymond Hains (9 November 1926 – 28 October 2005) was a prominent French visual artist and a founder of the Nouveau réalisme movement. In 1960, he signed, along with Arman, François Dufrêne, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé and Pierre Restany, the Manifesto of New Realism. In 1976, the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to Hains’ work was organized by Daniel Abadie at the National Center of Art and Culture (C.N.A.C.) in Paris. Hains named the show, which was the last one to be displayed at the C.N.A.C., La Chasse au C.N.A.C. (Hunt at the C.N.A.C). For it, Daniel Spoerri organized a dinner entitled La faim au C.N.A.C. (Hunger at the C.N.A.C.). In 1997 Hains was awarded the Kurt Schwitters Prize. In 2017, Hains was selected as an artist for the main exhibition of the 57th Venice Biennale. In 2001, the Centre Georges Pompidou devoted a retrospective exhibition to Raymond Hains in Paris called La tentative (The Endeavour). Galerie Max Hetzler has been working with the estate of Hains, led by Thomas Hains, since 2014. Early life and education Raymond Hains was born on November 9, 1926 in Saint-Brieuc, Côtes-d'Armor, France. He studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes for six months before leaving to travel to Paris. While at school he met the artist Jacques de la Villeglé, whom he would later collaborate with. Career Photography Shortly after enrolling in the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, Hains decided to leave school and move to Paris. There Hains began his apprenticeship with the photographer Emmanuel Sougez. In 1946 he started creating his first photograms and solarizations on paper. He then met André Breton, to whom he showed his work. His first abstract photographs were taken by means of a circular reflector equipped with small mirrors, which multiplied and fragmented the subject matter. For his first attempt, he used a copy of an Etruscan object and photographed it through the fragments of fluted glass. He entitled it Trésor de Golcondo (Treasures of Golcondo). One day, in the family's glazing workshop, he noticed some rejects of fluted glass splashed with paint - an accidental prism - and decided to use those latter for his photographs. He had effectively developed a new kind of camera, the Hypnagogoscope (expression made of three Greek words : hypnos : “sleep”; agogos “one who leads” and skopein “to observe”). The adjective hypnagogic, signifying “which immediately