Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon, France, on July 1887 and grew up in a family that respected and encouraged cultural activities. In 1911 at his eldest brother Jacques Villon's home in Puteaux, the Duchamp brothers hosted regular discussion group with other artists and writers including Francis Picabia, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Roger de la Frenaye, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris and others.

He submitted the painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 to the 1913 Armory Show in New York City, which displayed works of American artists and was the first major exhibition of the modern trends coming out of Paris. American show-goers, accustomed to realistic art, were scandalized, and the Nude was at the center of much of the controversy. He finally settled in New York in 1915 where he quickly befriended art patron Katherine Dreier and artist Man Ray. Duchamp and Dada are most often connected by his submission of Fountain, a urinal, to the Society of Independent Artists exhibit in 1917. Duchamp created also Rrose Sélavy, or Rose Sélavy, which was one of Duchamp's pseudonyms. The name, a pun, sounds like the French phrase "Eros, c'est la vie", which translates to English as "eros, that's life". It has also been read as "arroser la vie" ("to make a toast to life"). Sélavy emerged in 1921 in a series of photographs by Man Ray of Duchamp dressed as a woman. Marcel Duchamp died on October 2, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.