John Armleder is a performance artist, painter, sculptor, curator, and critic. He is most commonly known for his engagement with the multidisciplinary Fluxus movement, which was based around the Neo-Dadaist tenets of making work that is anti-art, anti-establishment, and ant-commercialism—sensibilities that Armleder has maintained creatively ever since. Much of his work is based on his artistic activities during that time, which included performances, installations, and other collective art endeavors. Always working in a breadth of mediums, Armleder's creations encompass everything from geometric abstraction drawings to "sculptural furniture" to radical performances to photographic prints. His multifaceted practice has been categorized many times over, receiving such labels as citationism, Fluxus, and Neo-Geo, yet Armleder maintains an ideological resistance to any singular art historical association.

In 1969, he co-founded the Geneva-based publishing house Groupe Ecart, primarily significant for introducing important artists like Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol to Switzerland and other parts of Europe. The Groupe Ecart later begat the Paris exhibition/performance art space Galerie Ecart, where Armleder held his first exhibition in 1973. Since his debut show, Armleder has exhibited internationally at such prominent institutions as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Culturel Suisse (Paris), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney).