Jean Arp first became a major figure in the Dada movement, the "cult of the irrational" that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during the First World War. From 1916 to around 1930, Arp worked mostly in collage and relief. After that time he devoted himself primarily to sculpture in the round. His sculptures and reliefs, both surreal and formal, combine the fantasy and sculptural discipline that make Arp's work a strong central force in modern art.
Source: DMAC Bulletin. January 1969
The creative production of Jean Arp is itself one of the clearest representations of individuality and personal inventiveness in the art of our time. As poet, painter, and sculptor, Arp has played a leading role in the development of European art since before World War I. In 1911 he became closely allied with the famous Blaue Reiter group in Munich. The tendency in Arp's work toward extreme simplification of form, directed toward metaphysical expression became clear by 1915. His work in collage, tapestry and painted wood relief showed a rapid development toward the highly distinctive treatment of a theme through abstract form.
Source: DMAC Bulletin, April 1965
In 1943 Sophie Taeuber, Arp’s wife and long-time artistic collaborator, was tragically killed in a stove accident. In response, Arp focused his sculpture on conceptual studies of the human form. This work transforms the female shape into an abstract image of beauty and tranquility, and expresses Arp’s conviction that art could be a manifestation of immaterial values. January, 2020
Exhibition History"Commitment, Community and Controversy: The Des Moines Art Center Collections," Des Moines Art Center, January 24, 1998 - May 10, 1998
"From Body to Being: Reflections on the Human Image," Des Moines Art Center, Feb. 1 - May 4, 1997
"Arp 1886 - 1966," organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Mar. 15 - May 24,1987 (circulated to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July 1 - Sept. 13, 1987; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Dec. 3, 1987 - Jan. 31, 1988
"Jean Arp Memorial Exhibition," organized by the U.C.L.A. Art Galleries for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: U.C.L.A. Art Galleries, Los Angeles, Nov. 10 - Dec. 12, 1968 (circulated to: Des Moines Art Center, Jan. 11 - Feb. 16, 1969; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Mar. 12 - Apr. 13, 1969; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, N.Y., May 16 - June 29, 1969)
"Sculptors' Drawings," Des Moines Art Center, Oct. 2 - 25, 1964
"Arp," Sidney Janis Gallery, Apr. 29 - May 25, 1963
"Jean Arp, Sculpture, Reliefs, Paintings, Collages, Tapestries," Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, Feb. 21 - Apr. 20, 1962 (circulated to: Kunsthalle, Basel, June 2 - July 14, 1962; Louisiana Museum, Humblebaek, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Tate Gallery, London, Nov. 24 - Dec. 23, 1962)
Published ReferencesRobert Hobbs and Judith Bernstock, ELEANORE MIKUS: SHADOWS OF THE REAL, Groton House, Ithaca, NY, University of Washington Press, 1991, b/w ill. p. 23.
DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, a catalog of selections from the permanent collection published in 1985, cat. ref. p.24, ill. pl. no.7, p.25
"Arp 1886 - 1966," Minneapolis Institute of Art; Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, Germany, cat. ref. p.309, no.250, b/w ill. p.233
"The Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the Des Moines Art Center," a portfolio representing a selection of fifty works purchased for the collection to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Nathan Emory Coffin, 1981, b.w. ill.
"Jean Arp Memorial Exhibition," UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, N. Y., 1968, cat. no. 8, cover ill.
"Arp," Sidney Janis Gallery, N. Y., 1963, cat. no. 4, ill.
"Art In America, "EVENING JOURNAL, Wilmington, Delaware, July 8, 1968, ill.
Sir Herbert Read, THE ART OF JEAN ARP, printed and bound in Great Britain, pub. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., N. Y., 1968, ill. pl. no. 114, p. 100
"Jean Arp, Sculpture, Reliefs, Paintings, Collages, Tapestries," Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1962, cat. ill.
DES MOINES REGISTER, Apr. 17, 1965, ill.
DMAC Appointment Calendar for 1972, ill. for December
DMAC Bulletin, Jan. 1969, ill.
AN UNCOMMON VISION: THE DES MOINES ART CENTER, Des Moines Art Center, 1998, ref. pp.33 & 48, color ill. p.49
DMAC Bulletin, Apr. 1965, cover ill.
Images (1)
Audio (1)
Hans (Jean) Arp (French, born Germany (Alsace), 1886-1966)
Torse Gerbe (Sheaf Torso), 1958
Run Time: 3:46
Recorded by Mia Buch, Museum Educator / September 2020
So was he Jean Arp or Hans Arp or Jean Hans Arp? That honestly depends on what language he was speaking, French, German, Artist, Poet, master of fluidity in every sense of the word, Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp was born in 1886 in an area once France, then Germany, now France. His nomadic sense served him as a citizen and creator, growing into the co-founding of the Surrealist and Dada movements, his impact and influence was international and interdisciplinary. Crossing borders throughout his life he worked in abstract collages, paintings, wood reliefs, and sculptures.
Jean Arp, as he is mostly known in the United States, developed new forms, flowing organic shapes caught, pause between figures and abstraction. He was not interested in recreating nature but was deeply inspired by it saying, "Art is fruit growing out of man like the fruit out of a plant like the child out of the mother”. He collaborated with chance, allowing his work to slowing metamorphosize, to take its own shape—visible creation in process.
This piece, Sheaf Torso is a stunning example of his later biomorphic sculptural work. Created the same year as his first major retrospective at the MoMA in New York City in 1958. Sheaf Torso, just over 3.5 feet tall is elevated on a plinth before us. It stands soft and stone, rounded, slightly folded, leaning in twisted movement. Made of exquisite purely white marble. Color and detail removed so we are able to marvel at the beauty of its form, rendered in the beauty of a perfect material created by nature. Lighting brings out the marble’s natural glinting sparkle, and accentuates the sculptures poses as we move around it. Seeing the work is how we know it, how we feel it. It is clearly human, and female, though Arp wanted his work to be almost form. So it is shape, a continuous contour, smooth, incredibly smooth, worn like pebbles, dancing like pouring milk, standing like smoke and budding. Becoming form, becoming a woman, another body among us, a human, with hips, a head and buttocks, a life a voice, a sensuous abstraction. A sheaf is a bundle of grain, like tied stalks of wheat. Torso like our middles. This form manifests in the most moving way.
Arp met his wife, collaborator and soul mate Sophie Taueber-Arp in 1915, they married in 1922 and she tragically died in 1943. Arp didn’t make art again until 1947. Ten years later he made this sculpture. Some say his more female forms were a connection to Sophie. Arp made many, many more works in his lifetime, he remarried, and died in 1966 in Switzerland. Look at Sheaf Torso. Think about the movement in the sculpture, the movements in one human life, movements in history, movements in nature, the movement in one body and think, what does it mean to be fluid?
