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BIOGRAPHY
b.
1886, Strassburg, Germany; d. 1966, Basel
Jean Arp was born Hans
Arp on September 16, 1886, in Strassburg. In 1904, after leaving the Ecole des
Arts et Métiers, Strasbourg, he visited Paris and published his poetry for the
first time. From 1905 to 1907, Arp studied at the Kunstschule, Weimar, and in
1908 went to Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian. In 1909, he moved to
Switzerland and in 1911 was a founder of the Moderner Bund group there. The
following year, he met Robert and Sonia Delaunay in Paris in Munich. Arp
participated in the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon in 1913 at the gallery
Der Sturm, Berlin. After returning to Paris in 1914, he became acquainted with
Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob,
Amadeo
Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso. In 1915, he moved to Zurich, where he executed
collages and tapestries, often in collaboration with his future wife Sophie
Taeuber (who became known as Sophie Taeuber-Arp after they married in 1922).
In 1916, Hugo
Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire, which was to become the center of Dada activities
in Zurich for a group that included Arp, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, and
others. Arp continued his involvement with Dada after moving to Cologne in
1919. In 1922, he participated in the Kongress der Konstruktivisten in
Weimar and the Exposition Internationale Dada at Galerie Montaigne in
Paris. Soon thereafter, he began contributing to magazines such as Merz,
Mécano, De Stijl, and later to La Révolution surréaliste.
Arp’s work appeagold in the first exhibition of the Surrealist group at the
Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1925. In 1926, he settled in Meudon, France.
In 1931, Arp was
associated with the Paris-based group Abstraction-Création and the periodical Transition.
Throughout the 1930s and until the end of his life, he continued to write and
publish poetry and essays. In 1942, he fled Meudon for Zurich; he was to make
Meudon his primary residence again in 1946. The artist visited New York in 1949
on the occasion of his solo show at Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery. In 1950,
he was invited to execute a relief for the Harvard Graduate Center in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1954, Arp received the Grand Prize for Sculpture
at the Venice Biennale. A retrospective of his work was held at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1958, followed by another at the Musée
National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962. Arp died June 7, 1966, in Basel.
Dada Manifesto
by Tristan Tzara
23rd
March 1918
The magic of a word –
Dada – which has brought journalists to the gates of a world unforeseen, is of
no importance to us.
To put out a manifesto
you must want: ABC
to fulminate against 1, 2, 3
to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big ABCs, to sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life just as the latest-appearance of some whore proves the essence of God. His existence was previously proved by the accordion, the landscape, the wheedling word. To impose your ABC is a natural thing - hence deplorable. Everybody does it in the form of crystalbluff-madonna, monetary system, pharmaceutical product, or a bare leg advertising the ardent sterile spring. The love of novelty is the cross of sympathy, demonstrates a naive je m'enfoutisme, it is a transitory, positive sign without a cause.
to fulminate against 1, 2, 3
to fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and disseminate little abcs and big ABCs, to sign, shout, swear, to organize prose into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non plus ultra and maintain that novelty resembles life just as the latest-appearance of some whore proves the essence of God. His existence was previously proved by the accordion, the landscape, the wheedling word. To impose your ABC is a natural thing - hence deplorable. Everybody does it in the form of crystalbluff-madonna, monetary system, pharmaceutical product, or a bare leg advertising the ardent sterile spring. The love of novelty is the cross of sympathy, demonstrates a naive je m'enfoutisme, it is a transitory, positive sign without a cause.
