NEW YORK, NY.- Michael Werner Gallery presents an exhibition of major works by Marcel Broodthaers, one of the most important artists of the last century. Born in Brussels in 1924, Broodthaers began writing poetry at an early age and was associated with the surrealist movement in his native Belgium. For nearly two decades he continued to write, struggling in poverty and obscurity, before turning to the visual arts at the age of forty; he explained in the catalog for his first exhibition, in 1964: “I, too, reflected whether I might not sell something and find some success in life…” His first artwork, Pense-Bête, consisted of several copies of his final volume of poems embedded in a mound of plaster. Embodied in this dramatic gesture are the concerns that would fascinate Broodthaers for the rest of his artistic career: an unending interest in wit and wordplay, coupled with an affectionate critique of the conventions of co