Arp, Jean

Arp, Jean (or Hans Arp) (b Strasbourg, 16 Sept. 1886; d Basle, 7 June 1966). French sculptor, painter, and poet who was prominently involved with several major avant-garde groups and movements in the first half of the 20th century. At the time of his birth his home city in Alsace was under German rule and he spoke French and German with equal ease (he wrote poetry in both languages). In 1912 he met Robert and Sonia Delaunay in Paris and Kandinsky in Munich, where he participated in the second Blaue Reiter exhibition. In 1915 he moved to Zurich, where he was one of the founders of the Dada movement and met his future wife Sophie Taeuber (they married in 1922), with whom he collaborated in experiments with cut-out paper compositions and collages. During the war years in Zurich he also made his first abstract polychrome relief carvings in wood (Dada Relief, 1916, Kunsthaus, Basle). In 1919–20 he lived in Cologne, where he continued his Dada activities in collaboration with his friend Max Ernst. From 1920 Arp worked mainly in Paris and in 1928 he settled at nearby Meudon. At this time he was involved in the Surrealist movement, his work including experiments with chance arrangements. He joined Cercle et Carré in 1930 and he was a founder member of Abstraction-Création in 1931. Also in 1931 he took up sculpture in the round (previously he had made only reliefs) and began to produce what are now his most familiar and distinctive works—sensuous abstract pieces (usually in bronze or marble) that convey a suggestion of organic forms without reproducing actual plant or animal shapes (Growth, 1938, Guggenheim Mus., New York). In 1941 Arp fled to Grasse on the French Riviera, then in 1942 to Switzerland. After the war he returned to Meudon. In his post-war work he did not seriously add to his earlier achievements, but he won many honours and prestigious public commissions; in 1954, for example, he was awarded the International Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale, and in 1958 he made a relief for the Unesco building in Paris.