Hans Arp

Hans (Jean) Arp was a pivotal figure in European modernism, bridging Dada, Surrealism, and constructivist abstraction. In 1916, at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, he co-founded the Dada movement in protest against the madness of World War I. There, he created his famous collages 'arranged according to the laws of chance.'

In the 1930s, Arp turned increasingly to sculpture in the round, producing smooth, sensual, organic marble and bronze sculptures that he called 'Human Concretions' (Concrétions humaines). These sinuous biomorphic forms evoked biological growth, stones shaped by flowing water, and the natural cycle of life.