MA-g
The Museum of Avant-garde

Jean Arp

Germany (1886—1966)
French-German born Jean (or Hans) Arp spent his first years in Strasbourg, Paris and Weimar. In 1912 Kandinsky invited him to join him in Munich and join the Der Blaue Reiter group. He visited and exhibited in Zurich and in Berlin. In 1915 he moved back to Zurich to benefit from the Swiss neutrality. He became part of the Dadaist group and artists around the Cabaret Voltaire, and he later set up the Cologne Dada group with Max Ernst and Alfred Grunwald. Between 1925 and 1926 his artistic approach become closer to Surrealism until 1931 when the group started to dissolve. He found a new direction and founded the new movement Abstraction-Création and the periodical Transition. He continued to experiment using different materials and mediums to rearrange new configurations. In 1942 he escaped the German occupation and moved back to Zurich until his death, in 1966.