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Monday
Jun042018

Jean Arp: Making Something from Something…

DateMonday, June 4, 2018 at 8:00AM

Jean Arp - Torso, Navel, Mustache-Flower - 1930 - Oil on wood relief - 31 1/2 x 39 3/8 x 1 1/2 in. (80 x 100 x 3.8 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (click photo for larger image)German-French artist Jean Arp (also known as Hans Arp 1886-1966) could turn anything into a work of art—and that’s exactly what he did!

Although his work is non-representational, it is all rooted in nature and very organic in form. He was also one of the first artists to let chance and randomness become part of his work.

Arp is best known for his multilayered, painted wood reliefs. By the time Arp created the work featured here, he had already perfected his assemblage technique: he drew designs on cardboard templates and had a carpenter execute them in wood. 

Arp was born in Alsace and studied at the Strasbourg School of Arts and Crafts, at Weimar (1905-7) and the Academie Julian, Paris (1908).  In 1912 he went to Munich where he knew Kandinsky and exhibited semi-figurative drawings at the second Blaue Reiter exhibition in 1912. In 1913 he exhibited with the Expressionists at the first Hebrstsalon (Autumn Salon) in Berlin. Aware of the developments within the French avant-garde through his contacts with such figures as Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Robert Delaunay, Arp exhibited his first abstracts and paper cutouts in Zurich in 1915, and began making shallow wooden reliefs and compositions of string nailed to canvas. In 1916 he was a founding member of Dada in Zurich, and he participated in the Berlin Dada exhibition of 1920. Arp is also associated with the Surrealist movement.

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