Torn-and-pasted paper and colored paper on colored paper; 48.5 x 34.6 cm.
Jean Arp, also called Hans Arp (b. Strassburg, Germany —d. Basel, Switzerland), French sculptor, painter, and poet who was one of the leaders of the European avant-garde in the arts during the first half of the 20th century. First trained as an artist in his native Strasbourg, he later studied in Weimar, Germany, and at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1912 he went to Munich, where, through his friend Wassily Kandinsky, he became briefly associated with Der Blaue Reiter. He returned to Paris in 1914 and became acquainted with the artists Modigliani, Picasso, and Robert Delaunay, as well as with the writer Max Jacob. During World War I he took refuge in Zürich, where he became one of the founders of the Dada movement. It was there that he produced his first painted reliefs. After the war he lived in Germany until 1924, when he and his wife, the artist Sophie Taeuber, whom he had married in 1921, settled near Paris in the town of Meudon. During the 1920s he was associated with the Surrealists, and in 1930 he was a member of the Cercle et Carré group. This was also the year in which he made his first papiers déchirés (“torn papers”). In 1931 he participated in the Abstraction-Création movement. During World War II he again went to live in Zürich, where his wife died in 1943. While in Switzerland he did his first papiers froissés (“crumpled papers”). After the war Arp returned to Meudon, where he continued his experiments with abstract form and color and wrote poetry. Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories by Jean Arp (1972) and Arp’s Collected French Writings (1974) were edited by Marcel Jean.
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