Jean Arp was a German-French artist of many forms. He was a painter, sculptor, poet, and multimedia abstractist. His work first appeared in a gallery in 1925 while he was working with a group of a few other artists who called themselves the Cologne Dada group. Professor Comberg mentioned Jean Arp to me when looking over one of my designs from project 1.1. It wasn’t what I chose as my final, but you get a glimpse of it from my studies board. It was an abstract reflective piece that I do agree, resembles the fluid shapes of Arp’s creations.
Arp’s poetry came before his sculptures and paintings. He published his words for the first time in 1904 while he was in Paris. Arp had an interesting life journey through volatile Europe. He was born in Germany and studied there from 1905-1907. He claimed to be mentally ill in order to avoid being drafted into the german military and ended up moving to Switzerland in 1915 because he favored the nation’s neutrality. He spent various amounts of time in various cities across France, Germany, and Switzerland and maybe it was this mobile existence that influenced the shapes with which he decided to express himself through his art.
Foundations of Art, Design, + Digital Culture 