Artist

Jean (Hans) Arp

1886–1966 · French-German

Jean (Hans) Arp was a founding member of Dada in Zurich in 1916 and, later, one of the quiet architects of European abstraction. Born in Strasbourg between French and German cultures, he wrote poetry in both languages and worked across collage, relief, and sculpture — "concretions" of forms he described as growing rather than made.

Arp let chance do part of the work: torn paper dropped and pasted where it fell, biomorphic reliefs cut from painted wood, marble and bronze forms that suggest cloud, seed, and body without naming any of them.