Executed in 1960.

Jean (Hans) Arp (German-French, 1886–1966) was a sculptor, painter, pioneer collagist and poet. Born Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp, he grew up in Strasbourg, a French town, which at the time was under the control of the German Empire. Having studied art in Weimar and Paris, Arp eventually settled in Switzerland. In 1915 he met the Swiss artist and textile designer Sophie Taeuber, who would become his wife and collaborator. Along with Tristan Tzara, Arp was an original member of the Zurich Dada group; together with Max Ernst he later founded the Cologne Dada group. In 1925 his art was included in the first Surrealist exhibition in Paris. Today he is best known for his highly polished sculptures based on natural shapes, as well as for his collages and reliefs reflecting the principles of automatism.

This vibrant work, executed by the Swiss artist Jean (Hans) Arp in 1960, exemplifies his achievement in the medium of collage, which remained central to his oeuvre from the early days of Dada to the last years of his career. Collage encapsulates the artist’s experiments with incorporating painting, assemblage, and three-dimensional depth. During his highly innovative Dada period, Arp devised a process of dropping materials, such as torn pieces of paper, randomly on a flat surface in order to create the composition; the element of chance became central to his artistic creation. This method eventually found its expression in Arp’s reliefs, marking a natural progression from his earlier Surrealist collages. The reliefs similarly integrated the element of chance in their construction, while also considering the sculptural quality of depth. In Collage, Arp drew on his recurrent use of cut-out shapes to produce a three-dimensional composition that is predicated on spatial tensions: flatness and depth, foreground and background, floating and stabilizing forces.

Describing his automatic creation of art, Arp wrote: “I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born, I have confidence in it. I do not think about it. The forms arrive pleasant, or strange, hostile, inexplicable, mute, or drowsy. They are born from themselves. It seems to me as if all I do is move my hands.” [1] It was this emphasis on chance and automatism, allowing for spontaneous creation unsuppressed by conscious thought, that aligned Arp with other Surrealist artists.

[1] J. Arp, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essais, souvenirs, 1920-1965. Paris, 1966, p. 307