participated in multiple modern art movements such as Dada, Surrealism, and Abstraction-Creation. While a
student, the accepted ideas about art that were reinforced at the prominent academies disenchanted Arp. He
recalled, “By the time I was 16 the everlasting copying of stuffed birds and withered flowers at the Strasbourg
School of Applied Art not only poisoned drawing for me but destroyed my taste for all artistic activity. I took
refuge in poetry.”3 Arp gradually developed his own artistic approach which his teachers discouraged: “I tried to
be natural in other words the exact opposite of what drawing teachers call ‘faithful to nature.' I made my first
elements after shapes reminiscent of nature and living organisms. While these forms are abstract, they refer to,
or evoke, living forms.
An explanation of Arp's rejection of traditional art was published in a 1932 Transition magazine under the title
“Notes From a Dada Diary.” Arp wrote (in lowercase letters), “art is fruit growing out of man like the fruit out of a
plant like the child out of the mother. while the fruit of the plant grows independent forms and never resembles a
balloon or a president in a cutaway suit the artistic fruit of man shows for the most part a ridiculous resemblance
to the appearance of other things. reason tells man to stand above nature and to be the measure of all things.
thus man thinks he is able to live and to create against the laws of nature and he creates abortions. through
reason man became a tragic and ugly figure. i dare say he would create even his children in the form of vases
with umbilical cords if he could do so. reason has cut man off from nature.”5
Hans Arp's late work after 1945 can only be understood in the context of
the horrific three decades that preceded it. The First World War, the catastrophe of the century, and the Second World War that followed shortly thereafter, were finally over. Thirty years of fearing for his life and living in dread
of persecution were finally over.
It is therefore no surprise that the artist's speechlessness at the beginning
of World War I was manifest in Dada poetry, which at the time was a new
form of expression, having developed in response to Europe's dreadful launch
into modernity. In Germany, there was only a short respite, which was characterized by hope for a new democratic future. What followed was the horrifying recognition that what were thought to have been the ghosts of the
past were returning with still more disastrous consequences for the continent.
As everyone knows, World War II wrought yet greater destruction.
After Arp's beloved wife and colleague Sophie accidentally died from
carbon monoxide poisoning in 1943, Arp became so paralyzed that it is
astonishing he could continue his work at all after 1945.
Since our primary responsibility is to promote Arp's artistic legacy and
that of his first wife, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, we dedicated the Stiftung Arp's
biannual conference in 2017 to this late body of work, which has found little
resonance within the scholarly community. We are pleased to present the
findings in this volume. Our hope is not only to share new research, but also
to provide further stimulus for our fellowship program. Established in 2014,
it supports research by both emerging as well as established scholars on the
work of Hans and Sophie Taeuber-Arp and the wider context surrounding it.
Director's Foreword
Engelbert Büning
11
On behalf of the Stiftung Arp e.V., I extend special thanks to the conference participants, who now present their conclusions and insights to a wider public in
our series, the Stiftung Arp e.V. Papers. Our heartfelt thanks go to our conference host, the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, and especially
to its Director Lisette Pelsers, who placed its stunning rooms at our disposal,
and to her team members Renske Cohen Tervaert, Jannet de Goede, Wanda
Vermeulen, and Lies Boelrijk. We also thank the Cultural Affairs Department at the German Embassy in The Hague for its generous support, which
extended beyond financial backing. Last but not least, we are grateful to
Loretta Würtenberger and our former Curator Maike Steinkamp for organizing the conference.
12
The central aim of the Stiftung Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp e.V.'s biannual conference is to bring together researchers and interested parties from
around the world to reflect on Hans Arp's work together, and to discuss
specific facets thereof which have received all too little attention, despite their
importance. In 2017, the conference was dedicated to the theme of “The Art
of Arp after 1945” and focused on aspects of Hans Arp's late works.
Created during the period between 1945 and the artist's death in 1966,
the late work is breathtaking in its resilience. It responds to the artistic currents of its time, while simultaneously continuing to pursue and fully realize
themes of the pre-war years. And it does all of this in a manner true to Arp's
beloved process of nature, which repeats annually, yet is perpetually and
masterfully renewed. Arp reaped the rewards of outward success during
these years. However, he did not stagnate, but rather—with Marguerite
Hagenbach-Arp at his side from 1953—he increasingly took the latitude to
develop his oeuvre further. It culminated in the Threshold Sculptures, surprisingly contemporary works in which the artist, who was then over sixty,
developed an entirely new formal language. It was also a period marked by
extensive travel, both in the literal sense to Greece, Mexico, and the United
States, and in the figurative sense to the mysticism of the Middle Ages and
to Asian philosophy.
Unrolling the intellectual map of these developments and tracing the ways
Arp crisscrossed its territories was the great joy of the two-day conference in
Otterlo, The Netherlands, which the Stiftung Arp e.V. organized in grateful
cooperation with the Kröller-Müller Museum. Parallel to the conference,
the Kröller-Müller Museum held an exhibition devoted to Arp entitled The
Poetry of Form, which was accompanied by a catalogue of the same name.
Foreword
Jana Teuscher and Loretta Würtenberger
13
With its distinguished collection situated in one of Europe's most significant
sculpture parks, the Kröller-Müller Museum provided a rich framework
for the conference. We extend our special thanks to the Museum's Director,
Lisette Pelsers, and her team for their ongoing support and assistance with
logistics and organization.
The authors address a wide spectrum of topics. For example, Jan Giebel
and Simona Martinoli focus on the late works in their contributions to the
present volume. On the one hand, Jan Giebel is concerned with the so-called
Threshold Sculptures, which Hans Arp began after 1958. On the other, Simona Martinoli turns her attention to the Forest Wheels that Arp created a
few years later for his garden in Tessin. Rudolf Suter turns his attention to
Hans Arp's interest in mysticism and its influence on his artistic output. To
that end, he consulted the many books on mysticism in Arp's library, which
is largely preserved in the artist's former homes in Clamart, France and Locarno, Switzerland. Likewise, Isabella Ewig addresses the subject of Arp and
mysticism in her exploration of his connections to Camille Bryen and Abhumanism. In her essay on the Brazilian Lygia Clark, Heloisa Espada brings
our attention to an artist working outside of Europe, demonstrating Arp's
wide-ranging impact once more. Alternately, Marta Smolin´ska addresses the
avant-garde networks that had been established in the 1920s and 1930s, in
which artists from Eastern Europe established highly influential positions.
With this as her starting point, the art historian analyzes the neo-avant-garde
in Poland and its fascination with Arp's work. To complement these studies
on Hans Arp as a visual artist, Agathe Mareuge turns to Arp's poetry and
analyzes the parallel processes he used to create both forms of art. The two
final texts in this volume take up the subject of architecture, once again
showing how Arp's influence transcended genres. Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen explores curvilinear lines in the work of Hans Arp and the architect Alvar Aalto,
tracing the connections and relationships between the two. Similarly, Dick
van Gameren illuminates Arp's overarching significance for architectural
form in the twentieth century. Overall, we hope that the essays in this publication will also lead to new scholarly engagement with the work and influence of Hans Arp.
Our third conference will be held in 2019, and once again we invite the
circle of Arp enthusiasts to follow our plans as they develop. In accordance
with our tradition of selecting a meaningful location, we have landed on
the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel. The conference planned by the
14
Stiftung Arp e.V. will be dedicated to Arp's contributions to the development
of the sculpture of the twentieth century. With an emphasis on Arp's work
and those of his contemporaries, we hope to articulate the radical change
that took place in sculpture over the course of the previous century.
We would like to thank the authors for sharing their insights. An international volume of conference proceedings that brings together scholarship by
authors from around the world requires not only engaging scholarship, but
also translations that are just as thorough and precise. We offer our heartfelt
thanks to Sarah McGavran for the translation from the German, Lynda
Stringer for translating the French passages, and Marcin Turski for the translation from the Polish. Not only did they translate these scholarly texts accurately, but they also transposed the words of the poet Hans Arp into English with great finesse. Last but not least, we thank Kai Fischer for his
assistance in finalizing this publication.
16
In March of 1954, the German art critic Will Grohmann wrote in a newspaper article: “Hans Arp is a phenomenon […]. He is a man for whom there
exist neither national borders nor intellectual and spiritual boundaries.”1
According to Grohmann, the artist was one of the freest citizens of the world.
What is more, he was one of the greatest contemporary sculptors, printmakers, and poets.
Indeed, Hans Arp (1886 – 1966) was a cosmopolitan whose oeuvre defies categorization in terms of both nationality as well as artistic style or
movement. The French-German artist was a founding member of Dada in
Zürich in 1916. By the mid-1920s, he was mingling with the Surrealists in
Paris, and in the early 1930s he joined the Paris artists' groups Cercle et
Carré and Abstraction Création, which were dedicated to non-objective
and geometric art. Arp was one of the major proponents of organic abstraction. Metamorphosis, or transformation and growth in nature, is a
unifying theme in his work. He neither recognized artistic categories, nor
did he limit his efforts to a single medium or genre. For Arp, poems, drawings, collages, reliefs, and from the early 1930s, sculptures, too, stood in
close dialogue with one another.
Arp's work from the Dada period and his stylistic development and ties
to the international avant-garde during the 1920s and 1930s are well documented. By contrast, his late work has received relatively little scholarly attention.2
This is surprising because Arp attained his international breakthrough as a sculptor only after 1945, when he began to receive numerous
commissions for public works and was awarded multiple prizes. For instance,
he produced two large-scale reliefs for Harvard University in Cambridge in
1950 (fig. 1). A commission for a sculpture at the university complex designed by Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva in Caracas between
1940 and 1960 followed in 1954. On the campus of the University City of
The Art of Hans Arp after 1945
Maike Steinkamp
An Introduction
17
Caracas, there is a close interplay between architecture, city planning, and
visual art. Many artists, including Miguel Arroyo, Alexander Calder, Fernand
Léger, and Henri Laurens participated in the project. Arp contributed the
large-scale sculpture, which stands on the covered plaza in front of an untitled ceramic relief by Matteo Manaure (fig. 2). In general, during this period,
Arp's works increased in scale and expanded even further into the public
sphere. This proves true for the bronze relief he designed for UNESCO in
Paris and the multi-part aluminum relief on the façade of the Technical University in Braunschweig (fig. 3). As was the case with the commissions, Arp
did not have to wait long after the end of the Second World War and his first
successes in the United States for international recognition.3
At the 1954
Venice Biennale, he received the Grand Prize for Sculpture (fig. 4). Ten years
later, in 1964, he was awarded the prestigious Grand Prix National des Arts
in France.
Arp's sculptures and reliefs were featured prominently at the first documenta in Kassel in 1955. Its organizer Arnold Bode wrote that the aim of
this first major international exhibition to take place in Germany after the
demise of National Socialism was to: “uncover the roots of contemporary
art in all its manifestations.”4
On view were primarily works by artists who
Fig. 1 Hans Arp: Constellations, 1950, Rau 397, American Redwood, Harvard Graduate Center, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass., Archive Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin/Rolandswerth
18
Fig. 2 Hans Arp: Shepherd of Clouds, 1954, Giedion-Welcker 122, Bronze, 330 × 123 × 230 cm, in front of
Matteo Manaure's untitled mural, University City of Caracas, Caracas
19
had begun their careers in the first half of the twentieth century and whose
art was denigrated by the National Socialists. Documenta presented their
work as both retrospective and as anticipatory of future artistic movements
and styles. Within this framework, Arp's work was understood as a signpost
for subsequent generations of artists. His sculpture Pagoda Fruit (1949, GiedionWelcker 97), which was not displayed on a base, was located at the entrance
to the sculpture gallery at the Fridericianum. Centered along the main axis
of this major exhibition space within the first documenta, it served as a pendant to Henry Moore's King and Queen (1952–1953). The gallery was lined
with additional sculptures by Arp and by artists such as Alexander Calder,
Barbara Hepworth, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Berto Lardera (fig. 5).
Arp's work was also well represented at the documenta exhibition that followed in 1959. Fifteen works by Arp were showcased there (fig. 6).
By the end of the 1950s, Arp ranked among the Olympians of the international art world. While his participation in documenta certainly played a
role, major institutional recognition accounts for his newfound status: in
1958, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an Arp retrospective,
Fig. 3 View of the wall relief by Arp for the Auditorium Maximum of Braunschweig Technical University,
taken in November 1960
20
Fig. 4 Hans Arp with Ptolemy I, 1950, Giedion-Welcker 128, Bronze or painted plaster, Venice, 1954
21
and a few years later, in 1962, the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris
featured a survey of his work.
Arp's significance after 1945 is not limited to international institutional
recognition, as this phase in his career is also marked by his numerous artistic innovations. He created new series, including the so-called Threshold
Sculptures. In these sculptures that resemble reliefs, Arp used clearly delineated planes and angles to create a constructive counterpoint to the soft
organic forms for which he had become so well-known. Moreover, his use
of negative space establishes a dialogue with the works' surroundings. The
sculptural group Forest Wheels, which Arp created between 1961 and 1964
at his last home in Locarno, mark an intensification of this integration of
art and nature.
Arp's work from this period, however, was not limited to sculpture. After
1945, his oeuvre is also characterized by a multitude of new approaches and
media. For example, his découpages—forms cut from black and colored paper
and cardboard—had artistic merit as components of collages and as models
for reliefs and sculptures. The way that Arp repurposed and varied découpage
forms bespeaks the principle of transformation, which had been foundational
to his art from the very beginning. Furthermore, he expressed anew his desire
for the transgression and comingling of artistic genres in his papiers dechirées
and papiers froisses. During this period of Arp's increasing renown, materials
such as brass, duralumin, and Belgium black limestone also entered his oeuvre,
reflecting editions produced in greater numbers and works in increasingly
large formats. Across all media, Arp maintained an emphasis on a highly
distilled visual language, which he explored in ever-changing formal and thematic constellations. In an article of 1952, Carola Giedion-Welcker wrote of
a “formal elementariness” (formaler Elementarismus) in Arp's work that
leaned towards the absolute, the simplified, and the essential, and whereby
playfulness, clarity, order, and precision played important roles.5
After his first
wife Sophie Taeuber-Arp died in 1943 and the end of the Second World War
in 1945, Arp's inclination towards the absolute led him to antiquity, the mysticism of the late Middle Ages, and non-Western cultures.
After 1945, Arp's poetic work came into sharper focus as well. It is significant that in the review quoted above, Grohmann praised Arp's poems
alongside Arp's visual art. In the 1950s, he published multiple volumes of
poetry in both German and French. In the process, Arp alternated between
the two languages just as easily as he moved across artistic genres.
22
Fig. 5 Hans Arp: Pagoda Fruit, 1949, Giedion-Welcker 97, Bronze (2/3, cast 1954)
and Mirr, 1949, Giedion-Welcker 98, Granit (1/1), displayed with works by Henry Moore,
Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Berto Lardera
at the documenta in Kassel, 1955
In addition to these artistic achievements, Arp's late work also resonated with
other artists during his late period. Many painters and sculptors of the
younger generation, including the American artist Ellsworth Kelly, the French
artist and poet Camille Bryen, who was a major proponent of Art Informel,
and the German painters Günther Fruhtrunk and Karl Otto Götz were inspired by his work. It is significant that Arp's work was fascinating to proponents of Art Informel and of geometric abstraction alike. The latter group
included Kelly, Fruhtrunk, and the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, who referred
to him in a letter as “mon Maître.” Indeed, Arp's significance for the development of Concrete art in South America cannot be underestimated.6
Many
Polish artists were either intrigued by Arp's work or directly influenced by it,
as was Maria Papa Rostkowska.7
At the same time, Arp drew inspiration
from the movements of the 1950s, keeping abreast of the development of
Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, and Tachisme while remaining true to
his artistic roots.8
After 1945, he also maintained close contact with his artist
friends and colleagues from before the War, including Hans Richter, Richard
Huelsenbeck, Raoul Hausmann, Frederick Kiesler, and Michel Seuphor. Importantly, in this way he also became an intermediary between the artists of
the pre- and post-war periods.
23
Fig. 6 Hans Arp: Shepherd of Clouds, 1953, Giedion-Welcker 123, Bronze
(1/1), 152 × 74 × 60 cm, with works by Henri Laurens displayed at the
Orangerie, documenta 2, Kassel 1959
Arp's work also transcended and unified these generations, which is likely
what fueled his popularity and international success after 1945. To be sure,
after 1945, Arp's organic forms had become a cipher for modern art. They
reverberated throughout the organic architecture of Le Corbusier, Hans
Scharoun, and Alvar Aalto, and in the industrial design of the 1950s, which
included the ever-popular kidney table. In her essay “Urelement und Gegenwart in der Kunst von Hans Arp”, the art historian Carola Giedion-Welcker
wrote that Arp's “vegetal Constructivism” is characterized by its positive
resonance within the most divergent of artistic movements.9 She also noted:
“Enriched by irrational currents and at the same time disciplined by an alert
formal sensibility, these fantastic formations [of his art] seem to strike a
balance between chance and rules, between the awakening of form and the
deliberate coinage of a modern aesthetic conscience.”10 The balance that
Giedion-Welcker describes is likely the reason that Hans Arp's multi-faceted
and seemingly boundless creativity left its mark on so many different artists,
writers, architects, and designers. His work resonates to this day, and there
is ample room left to explore its impact.