Jean Arpartist • sculptorStraatsburg (Duitsland, nu Frankrijk) 1886-1966 Basel (Zwitserland)

Hans, better known as Jean, Arp was a German-French avant-garde artist. He is mainly known for his organic sculptures and reliefs, but also made collages and wrote poems. Arp studied at the academies in Strasbourg, Weimar and Paris and was at the cradle of a number of important art movements. For example, after moving to Switzerland in 1909, he founded Der Moderne Bund with the aim of making avant-garde art better known. Arp regularly traveled to Paris where he maintained contact with artists such as Modigliani and Picasso. In Munich he met Kandinsky. When he moved to Zurich in 1915, he mainly worked on paper collages with his partner Sophie Taeuber. A year later, together with Hugo Ball and others, he founded the Dada movement, a movement in which artists responded to the First World War in various mediums. From the 1930s, Arp wrote and published poetry and essays. During the Second World War he fled to Zurich and then returned to Meudon, France. In 1954 he won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale. His work is included in the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Kröller-Müller Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Kunstmuseum, among others.