ARP, Jean

Born a German citizen in Strasbourg, Arp moved easily between France and Germany (and between two first names), between the French and German languages, and between visual art and poetry. In the first respect, he made abstract reliefs dependent upon cutouts and highly distinctive sculptures utilizing curvilinear shapes. He worked with automatic composition, chance, and collaborations. He appropriated the epithet concrete art, even though his biomorphic forms were quite different from the geometries...