Arp: Paper

From his early years as part of Zurich Dada until the 1960s, Hans/Jean Arp produced an extraordinary and influential body of work. He is best known for two- and three-dimensional work deploying biomorphic forms that would come to epitomize organic abstraction. This new publication focuses on Arp’s works on paper, as well as his paper collages, providing a comprehensive picture of their role in the artist’s multifaceted output, including as a vehicle for play and as a way of inventing new worlds. Split across five chapters, some two hundred illustrations offer a rich and representative selection of works that have mostly never been reproduced or exhibited publicly before. An intriguing new perspective on the artist’s unique vocabulary of shapes and gestures emerges through the book’s five thematically organized chapters and the texts accompanying them, while an illuminating introduction by Arie Hartog and Loretta Würtenberger unpacks the formal language and artistic resonances of these works, both drawing out their connections to Arp’s iconic sculptural practice and considering his prolific work with and on paper as a fascinating world in itself.