The nature of Arp2018

"Over a career spanning more than six decades, Jean (Hans) Arp (1886-1966) produced a remarkably influential body of work in a rich variety of materials and formats, creating drawings, prints, books, textiles, collages, painted reliefs, and sculptures. Disillusioned by the destructiveness of World War I, Arp sought creative strategies analogous to processes found in nature, such as growth, gravity, decay, and chance. A founder of the Dada movement and a pioneer of abstraction, he developed a vocabulary of curving, organic forms that moved fluidly between abstraction and representation and became a common point of reference for several generations of artists. Born in the politically fraught region of Alsace, between France, Germany, and Switzerland, Arp responded to the crises of the early...