Jean Arp

Lèvres et glace a main, 1927

The work of Hans Arp combines the major art trends in the early 20th century: Dada, surrealism and the abstract trends in the 1930s. From 1916 Arp made a name for himself as a poet, sculptor and painter. His associative play with linguistic ambiguity finds its pictorial counterpart in his collages, sculptures and reliefs. Arp’s creative work revolves around two major categories of themes: the human body and the natural world of plants. His work Lèvres et glace à main [Lips and hand mirror], 1927, is an organic configuration of rounded bodily shapes – an object that did not arise from the immediate emulation of nature. Instead, the association lies in ideas, in the imagination or in dreams about the ways in which vitality or growth can be expressed in pictures and suggest the formal canon of Surrealism. Everyday things are quoted formally and in the title, and transferred to an abstract pictorial space.