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Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
JEAN ARP Ohne titel.
Oil applied with wood block on laid paper on paper mount, 1934. 700x500 mm; 27x19 3/4 inches, overall. Incised with the artist's signature and date within the image, and signed and dated on the paper mount, recto.
Provenance: Gift from the artist to Philippe Frouin de la Londe, Comte de la Roche, with the dedication in ink on the mount, verso,1962; sold to private collection, Athens, 2014.
Arp (1886-1966) was among the most important abstract artists of the 20th century, a significant sculptor, painter and poet involved with multiple modern art movements. Born in Strasburg (at the time under German control), he studied at the Kunstschule in Weimar and the Académie Julian in Paris. In the early 1910s, he moved and traveled around Europe frequently, meeting important figures in the nascent modern art scene such as Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Wassily Kandinsky, Amadeo Modigliani and Pablo Picasso. When World War I began, he moved to Switzerland where he became friends with the author and Dada founder Hugo Ball (1886-1927) and participated in the short-lived Dada nightclub called Cabaret Voltaire.
In 1920, Arp founded the Cologne Dada group with Max Ernst (1891-1976) and Alfred Grünwald (1884-1951). During this time, he produced "automatic drawings," freeing his mind to allow the pen to travel where it wanted on the page. After Dada disbanded, like many Dada artists he transitioned to Surrealism and participated in the first surrealist exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. He later broke with them and founded Abstraction-Création in the 1930s; during this time he started to create his famous biomorphic sculptures.
