Galerie Hus - Biographie de Jean ARP

Hans Arp, Jean, was born in Strasbourg in 1887. He studied first to the Art Academy of Weimar (1904-1906), then to the Julian Academy in Paris in 1908. He met Sophie Taeuber in 1915 and married the painter in 1922. They created together abstract âduet-collagesâ with papers cut out with the trimmer. The following year, he was co-founder of the Dada group of Zurich; later he took part in the Dada movement of Berlin and Cologne.

In 1916, he worked with the fate into his collages by retaining the position taken by papers he let fall on a sheet. At that time, Arp created reliefs with assemblies of lively-colors-plates of wood (1916-1917). In 1920, he created an alphabet for his reliefs where the signs evoke real forms. He invented and painted decorations of ballets.

Arp settled down in Paris in 1925 and joined the surrealist movement. He made his first sculptures. He took French nationality in 1926 and organised his first personal exhibition the year after. In 1928, Arp practised the automatic writing of the surrealists and their game: the exquisite corpse. From 1942 to 1945, Arp took refuge in Switzerland where his wife, Sophie Tauber Arp, died tragically. Throughout his life, Arp was devoted to poetry at the same time to his plastic work. Jean Arp died in BÃ¢le, Switzerland, in 1966.