Sophie Taeuber-Arp
In 1927, Sophie Taeuber-Arp wrote, “The desire to enrich and beautify things cannot be interpreted materialistically, that is, in the sense of increasing their value as possessions; rather, it stems from the instinct for perfection and the creative act.” 1 Over the course of her career, she demonstrated this desire to make beautiful things, with a level of precision that would become her hallmark, in a wide variety of artistic pursuits. She worked as a designer of textiles, beadwork, costumes, furniture, and interiors, as well as an applied arts teacher, puppet maker, architect, painter, sculptor, illustrator, and magazine editor. Through her artistic output and professional alliances, she consistently challenged the historical boundaries separating fine art from craft and design.
After training at the interdisciplinary Debschitz School in Munich, Taeuber-Arp returned to her native Switzerland in 1914 and launched a successful applied arts practice. The following year, she began attending Rudolf von Laban’s influential school for expressionist dance, and met her future husband, the Alsatian artist and poet Jean (Hans) Arp, with whom she frequently collaborated for the rest of her life. Taeuber-Arp became an active participant in the Zurich Dada movement, initiated by Arp and other exiles who found refuge in the Swiss city during World War I. In order to support herself and Arp, she taught textile design at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich from 1916 to 1929. In 1918, Taeuber-Arp was commissioned by the school’s director to design marionettes for a modern adaptation of the 18th-century commedia dell’arte play King Stag; celebrated by her contemporaries, these painted turned-wood figures appeared in a variety of avant-garde publications during her lifetime. Taeuber-Arp’s group of related sculptures of abstracted heads are today considered icons of the Dada period.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Taeuber-Arp embarked on several architectural and interior design projects, most significantly a collaboration with Arp and the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg on the ambitious decoration of the Aubette entertainment complex in Strasbourg, France. In 1929, Taeuber-Arp left Zurich for Paris, where she turned her attention to abstract paintings and painted wood reliefs that employ a reduced geometric vocabulary; these works display a tension between precision and playfulness that is characteristic of her artistic production. During the 1930s, she was associated with two groups of artists likewise devoted to abstraction, Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création, and edited the short-lived international journal Plastique/Plastic.
Taeuber-Arp spent her final years in exile in the South of France during the Nazi occupation. In this last phase of her career, she contributed to the print portfolios 5 Constructionen + 5 Compositionen and 10 Origin, published by the association of Swiss modern artists Allianz, and made a series of exuberant line drawings that appear improvised but are actually precisely planned and executed. After Taeuber-Arp’s accidental death by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1943, Arp worked to promote her legacy, in part by producing a number of posthumous “re-creations” of her artworks.
Charlotte Healy, Research Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture
Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Blanche Gauchat, “Guidelines for Drawing Instruction in the Textile Professions” (1927), in Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Avant-Garde Pathways, ed. Estrella de Diego (Málaga, Spain: Museo Picasso, 2009), 167–68. For the original German text, see S. H. Arp-Taeuber and Blanche Gauchat, Anleitung zum Unterricht im Zeichnen für textile Berufe (Zurich: Gewerbeschule der Stadt Zürich, 1927).
The research for this text was supported by a generous grant from The Modern Women's Fund.
- Introduction
- Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp (; 19 January 1889 – 13 January 1943) was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer. Born in 1889, in Switzerland, the daughter of a pharmacist, the family moved to Germany when she was two years old. Some years later she began attending art schools, and moved back to Switzerland during the First World War. At an exhibition in 1915, she met for the first time the German-French artist Hans/Jean Arp, whom she married shortly after. It was during these years that they became associated with the Dada movement, which emerged in 1916, and Taeuber-Arp's most famous works – Dada Head (Tête Dada; 1920) – date from these years. They moved to France in 1926, where they stayed until the invasion of France during the Second World War, at the event of which they went back to Switzerland. In 1943, she died in an accident with a leaking gas stove. Despite being overlooked since her death, she is considered one of the most important artists of concrete art and geometric abstraction of the 20th century.
- Wikidata
- Q254395
- Introduction
- Artist.
- Nationalities
- Swiss, French, Russian
- Gender
- Female
- Roles
- Artist, Designer, Painter, Sculptor
- Names
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sophie Henriette Taeuber-Arp, Sophie Henriette Taeuber, Sophie Tauber-Arp, Sophie Taeuber -Arp, née Taeuber Taeuber -Arp, Sophie Täuber, née Taeuber Täuber, Sophie Henriette Taeuber Arp, Sophie Taeuber, Sophie Henriette Arp-Taeuber, Sophie Taeuber- Arp, Taeuber-Arp
- Ulan
- 500020080
Exhibitions
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508: According to the Laws of Chance
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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512: Circle and Square, Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Piet Mondrian
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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509: Florine Stettheimer and Company
Oct 21, 2019–Oct 12, 2020
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Dadaglobe Reconstructed
Jun 12–Sep 18, 2016
MoMA
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Designing Modern Women 1890–1990
Oct 5, 2013–Oct 19, 2014
MoMA
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp has
33 exhibitionsonline.
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Vertical, horizontal, carré, rectangulaire 1917
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Head 1920
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Composition 1930
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Échelonnement désaxé 1934
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Jean (Hans) Arp, Alexander Calder, Giorgio de Chirico, Hans Erni, Max Ernst, Justino Fernández, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Jean Hélion, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Alberto Magnelli, Joan Miró, Ben Nicholson, Amédée Ozenfant, Pablo Picasso, Kurt Seligmann, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Joaquín Torres-García, Gérard Vulliamy, Ossip Zadkine, Various Artists 23 Gravures 1930–35, published 1935
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Plate (folio 43) from 23 Gravures 1935
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Various Artists, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, César Domela-Nieuwenhuis, Jean (Hans) Arp, George L. K. Morris Plastique, no. 1 1937
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Various Artists, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean (Hans) Arp, César Domela-Nieuwenhuis, George L. K. Morris Plastique, no. 2 1937
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Various Artists, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean (Hans) Arp, César Domela-Nieuwenhuis, George L. K. Morris Plastique, no. 3 1938
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Muscheln und schirme (Shells and Umbrellas) 1939
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Plate (folio 2 verso) from Muscheln und schirme (Shells and Umbrellas) 1939
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Plate (folio 6) from Muscheln und schirme (Shells and Umbrellas) 1939
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Plate (folio 12) from Muscheln und schirme (Shells and Umbrellas) 1939
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Plate (folio 16) from Muscheln und schirme (Shells and Umbrellas) 1939
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Various Artists, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean (Hans) Arp, George L. K. Morris Plastique, no. 4 1939
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Various Artists, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean (Hans) Arp, George L. K. Morris Plastique, no. 5 1939
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Max Bill, Serge Brignoni, Hans Erni, Hans Fischli, Hans Hinterreiter, Max Huber, Léo Leuppi, Richard Paul Lohse, Vreni Löwensberg, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Various Artists 5 Constructionen + 5 Compositionen 1941
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Plate (folio 15) from 5 Constructionen + 5 Compositionen 1941
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Jean (Hans) Arp, Max Bill, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, César Domela-Nieuwenhuis, Vasily Kandinsky, Léo Leuppi, Richard Paul Lohse, Alberto Magnelli, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Georges Vantongerloo, Various Artists 10 Origin 1942
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Plate from 10 Origin 1942
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Jean (Hans) Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp Die Engelsschrift 1942
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Jean (Hans) Arp, Camille Bryen, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Oscar Domínguez, Serge (Comte Serge Jastrebzoff) Férat, Alberto Giacometti, Albert Gleizes, Raoul Hausmann, Henri Laurens, Fernand Léger, Alberto Magnelli, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Jean Metzinger, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Léopold Survage, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Edgard Tytgat, Jacques Villon, Various Artists Poésie de mots inconnus 1949
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean (Hans) Arp In-text plate (folio 9) from Poésie de mots inconnus 1949
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Various Artists, Jean (Hans) Arp, Giacomo Balla, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Albert Gleizes, Auguste Herbin, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, František Kupka, Fernand Léger, Alberto Magnelli, Piet Mondrian, Francis Picabia, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Theo van Doesburg, Jacques Villon Art of Today, Masters of Abstract Art (Art d'aujourd'hui, maîtres de l'art abstrait), Album I 1953
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Sophie Taeuber-Arp Four Spaces with a Broken Cross (Quatre espaces à croix brisée) from Art of Today, Masters of Abstract Art (Art d'aujourd'hui, maîtres de l'art abstrait), Album I 1953 (original executed in 1932)
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