Art - Hans Arp

The art of Hans Arp is closely related with Dada and Surrealism. He was born in Strasbourg in 1887, he grew up in this city. Arp went do the Kunstgewerbeschule in Strasbourg after completing his studies at secondary school. He disliked the academic standards which accentuated the making of still lives and other conventional objects of arts. Arp studied, irregularly, at the Académie Julian in Paris, after his father and he moved to Switzerland. He met Kandinsky and other members of Der Blaue Reiter during one of his visits to Paris, the art of Der Blaue Reiter influenced Arp's art.
Arp traveled by train to Paris in 1914, because the war had broken out. He had no money, but made a lot of friends - Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Picasso and Robert Delaunay - who also helped him in financial ways. Hans Arp had to fulfill his compulsory service in the German army, but he avoided this duty to pretend he was mad. Arp became a member of the Dada-group of Tristan Tzara, he met his wife there as well. Sophie Täuber was also an artist and she became Mrs. Täuber-Arp in 1922. She and Hans Arp worked together on several abstract projects, also before their marriage. Arp had a French passport, because he lived in Strasbourg, so this made it possible to move to Paris, where he and his wife hired a studio in 1927. Hans Arp made collages with his friend Max Ernst, during the same period, they called their work 'Fatagaga'*. He also became friends with Kurt Schwitters.
Arp's style changed after 1929, he began to make more sculptures out of bronze and stone, it's his so called perfect work, because of it's smooth and water like forms.
Sophie and Hans planned to go to the United States, because of the war, but they couldn't get a visa, so they had to stay in Europe. Arp's wife died in 1943, because of carbon monoxide poisoning. Hans Arp was a broken man, but he married the Swiss Marguerite Hagenbach in 1945, she was a great admirer and collector of Hans and Sophie Arp's work.
Arp won a big prize for sculpture, and now he was able to work on grander scale, because there were many orders. Hans Arp died in 1966 as one of the greatest abstract sculptors.

*= 'Fabrication de Tableaux Garantis Gazometriques' (Manufacturing of Guaranteed Gazometric Paintings)