Jean
Arp/Works and biography
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Fruit-amphore
1946 (?) (cast 1951) |
Crown of Buds
1936 |
Large Collage
1955 reconstruction of original of ca. 1918 |
Overturned
Blue Shoe with Two Heels Under a Black Vault
ca. 1925 |
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Head and Shell
ca. 1933 |
Maimed
and Stateless
1936 |
Untitled
1940 |
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Jean (Hans) Arp was born on September 16, 1886, in Strasbourg.
In 1904, after leaving the Ecole des Arts et Métiers,
Strasbourg, he visited Paris and published his poetry
for the first time. From 1905 to 1907, Arp studied at
the Kunstschule, Weimar, and in 1908 went to Paris,
where he attended the Académie Julian. In 1909,
he moved to Switzerland and in 1911 was a founder of
the Moderner Bund group there. The following year, he
met Robert and Sonia Delaunay in Paris and Vasily Kandinsky
in Munich. Arp participated in the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon
in 1913 at the gallery Der Sturm, Berlin. After returning
to Paris in 1914, he became acquainted with Guillaume
Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Amadeo Modigliani, and Pablo
Picasso. In 1915, he moved to Zurich, where he executed
collages and tapestries, often in collaboration with
his future wife Sophie Taeuber.
In 1916, Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire, which
was to become the center of Dada activities in Zurich
for a group that included Arp, Marcel Janco, Tristan
Tzara, and others. Arp continued his involvement with
Dada after moving to Cologne in 1919. In 1922, he participated
in the Kongress der Konstruktivisten in Weimar. Soon
thereafter, he began contributing to magazines such
as Merz, Mécano, De Stijl, and later to La Révolution
surréaliste. Arp’s work appeared in the
first exhibition of the Surrealist group at the Galerie
Pierre, Paris, in 1925, and the following year he settled
in Meudon, France.
In 1931, Arp was associated with the Paris-based group
Abstraction-Création and the periodical Transition.
Throughout the 1930s and until the end of his life,
he continued to write and publish poetry and essays.
In 1942, he fled Meudon for Zurich; he was to make Meudon
his primary residence again in 1946. The artist visited
New York in 1949 on the occasion of his solo show at
Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery. In 1950, he
was invited to execute a relief for the Harvard Graduate
Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1954, Arp received
the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale.
A retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, in 1958, followed by another at
the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris,
in 1962. Arp died June 7, 1966, in Basel.
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