[6] In Switzerland, Oppenheim was exposed to a plethora of art and artists from a young age, including Alfred Kubin, German Expressionists, French Impressionists and poems of the Romantics.

[11] The work of Paul Klee, the focus of a retrospective at the Kunsthalle Basel in 1929, provided another strong influence on Oppenheim, arousing her to the possibilities of abstraction.

[12][13] In May 1932, at the age of 18, Oppenheim moved to Paris from Basel, Switzerland and sporadically attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière to study painting.

After visiting her studio and seeing her work, Arp and Giacometti invited her to participate in the Surrealist exhibition in the “Salon des Surindépendants,”[14] held in Paris between 27 October and 26 November.

[16] Oppenheim later met André Breton and began to participate in meetings at the Café de la Place Blanche with the Surrealist circle.

[17] Shortly after she began to attend meetings regularly with Breton and other acquaintances, Oppenheim's circle was joined by other Surrealist artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Man Ray.

Many of her pieces consisted of everyday objects arranged to allude to female sexuality and feminine exploitation by the opposite sex.

Oppenheim's Object consists of a teacup, saucer and spoon that she covered with fur (she thought it was from a Chinese gazelle, though MoMA determined that it is not).

[24] Object was inspired by a conversation Oppenheim had with Pablo Picasso and his lover Dora Maar at the Café de Flore in Paris.

[23] By covering the tea service with fur, Oppenheim achieved a Surrealist goal by liberating the saucer, spoon, and teacup from their original functions as consumer objects.

[23] The artwork's long title was created by Breton (Oppenheim referred to it simply as Object), who combined Leopold Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs with Edouard Manet's Dejeuner sur l’herbe.

[23] Oppenheim's Object would be one of the main forces that led to her lengthy artistic crisis due to its spiking increase in popularity after being displayed by Barr in New York.

Contrary to the discretion about the gender of Le Déjeuner's creator, the photographs provided an unmistakable monument to her femininity and a testimony to her unwillingness to expose it.

Oppenheim was also impacted when her father had to flee to Switzerland before World War II due to his Jewish surname; his credentials and training as a doctor were also discredited, leaving him unemployed.

The varying programs and exhibitions at the Kunsthall Bern placed Oppenheim in a stimulating artistic environment that enabled her to explore international art trends while working alongside Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri, and Markus Raetz.

[11] In 1956, Oppenheim designed the costumes and masks for Daniel Spoerri’s production of Picasso’s play Le Désir attrapé par la queue in Berne.

Three years later, in 1959, she organized a Spring Banquet (Le Festin) in Bern for a few friends at which food was served on the body of a naked woman.

[17] With Oppenheim's permission, Andre Breton restaged the performance later that year at the opening of the Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme (EROS), at the Galerie Cordier in Paris.

Due to the fact it lights up at night, newspapers called it a “lighthouse” and “an eyesore.” Eventually it became covered in algae and moss, allowing the public to accept it.

She was then introduced to Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, and was in 1936 asked to exhibit her work in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Similarly, unlike other Surrealists, Oppenheim used symbols with a “fluid and changeable impact” and produced works that were cohesive through frequent and organized ideas rather than formal language.

[35] In 2013, a comprehensive retrospective of Oppenheim's work opened at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, gathering the artist's paintings, sketches, sculptures, masks, clothing, furniture, and jewelry.

Lenders included singer David Bowie, the Swiss retail tycoon and art dealer Ursula Hauser, and the Dutch diamond magnate Sylvio Perlstein.

[39] In 2019, Basel inaugurated a plaza, road, fountain and a high-rise apartment building (by Herzog & de Meuron)[40] all named after Oppenheim in the city center.

[41] Oppenheim has been esteemed as a figure of “feminist identification” for the women's movement and a role model for younger generations due to her “socio-critical and emancipatory attitude.” In 1975 Oppenheim gave a speech at “the presentation of Basler Kunstpreis” and directly asked women “to demonstrate to society by the invalidity of taboos by adopting unconventional ways of life” and utilize their intellect as a creative strength without fear.