Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp (/ˈtɔɪbər ˈɑːrp/; 19 January 1889 – 13 January 1943)[1] was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer.
Sophie Taeuber-Arp
13 January 1943 (aged 53)
Swiss
Gewerbeschule in St. Gallen, Dschebitz-Schule in Munich, and Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg
Sculpture, painting, textile design, dancing
Born in 1889 in Davos and raised in Trogen, Switzerland, she attended a trade school in St. Gallen and, later, art schools in Germany, before moving back to Switzerland during the First World War. At an exhibition in 1915, she met for the first time the German-French artist Jean Arp,[2] 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.[3] 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.[2]
Despite being overlooked since her death,[4] she is considered one of the most important artists of concrete art and geometric abstraction of the 20th century.
Early life[edit]
Born in Davos, Switzerland, Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber was the fifth child of Prussian pharmacist Emil Taeuber and Swiss Sophie Taeuber-Krüsi, from Gais in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzerland. Her parents operated a pharmacy in Davos until her father died of tuberculosis when she was two years old, after which the family moved to Trogen, where her mother opened a pension. She was taught to sew by her mother.[5]
She studied textile design at the trade school (Gewerbeschule, today School of Applied Arts) in St. Gallen (1906–1910).[6] She then moved on to the workshop of Wilhelm von Debschitz at his school in Munich, where she studied in 1911 and again in 1913; in between, she studied for a year at the School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in Hamburg. In 1914, due to World War One, she returned to Switzerland.[3] She joined the Schweizerischer Werkbund in 1915.[7] In the same year, she attended the Laban School of Dance in Zürich, and in the summer she joined the artist colony of Monte Verita in Ascona; in 1917, she danced with Suzanne Perrottet, Mary Wigman and others at the Sun Festival organised by Laban in Ascona.[8] From 1916 to 1929, Taeuber was an instructor at Zürich Kunstgewerbeschule in Switzerland, teaching embroidery and design classes.[9]
Death and legacy[edit]
In early 1943, Taeuber-Arp missed the last tram home one night and slept in a snow-covered summer house.[5] She died there of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning caused by an incorrectly operated stove at the house of Max Bill.[10]
Wassily Kandinsky said: "Sophie Taeuber-Arp expressed herself by means of the 'colored relief,' especially in the last years of her life, using almost exclusively the simplest forms, geometric forms. The forms, by their sobriety, their silence, their way of being sufficient unto themselves, invite the hand, if it is skillful, to use the language that is suitable to it and which is often only a whisper; but often too the whisper is more expressive, more convincing, more persuasive, than the 'loud voice' that here and there lets itself burst out."[20]
In 2014, at the Danser sa vie dance and art exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in France, a photograph was displayed of Taeuber-Arp dancing in a highly stylized mask and costume at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1917.[21]
Taeuber-Arp was the only woman on the eighth series of Swiss banknotes; her portrait was on the 50-franc note from 1995 to 2016.[10]
A museum honouring[22] Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp opened in 2007 in a section of the Rolandseck railway station in Germany, re-designed by Richard Meier.[10] The video work "Sophie Taeuber-Arp's Vanishing Lines" (2015) by new media artist Myriam Thyes from Switzerland is about her "Lignes" drawings, segmented circles intersected by lines.[23][24]
On 19 January 2016, Google created a Google Doodle for Taeuber-Arp to commemorate her 127th birthday. The doodle was made by Mark Holmes.[25][26][27]
Exhibitions[edit]
Taeuber-Arp took part in numerous exhibitions. For example, she was included in the first Carré exhibition at the Galeries 23 (Paris) in 1930, along with other notable early 20th-century modernists. In 1943, Taeuber-Arp was included in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.[28] Many museums around the world have her work in their collections, but in the public consciousness her reputation lagged for many years behind that of her more famous husband. Sophie Taeuber-Arp began to gain substantial recognition only after the Second World War, and her work is now generally accepted as in the first rank of classical modernism. An important milestone was the exhibition of her work at documenta 1 in 1955.
In 1970, an exhibit of Taeuber-Arp's work was shown at the Albert Loeb Gallery in New York City.[29]
Then, in 1981 the Museum of Modern Art (New York) mounted a retrospective of her work that subsequently travelled to the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal.[10]
American scholar Adrian Sudhalter organized an exhibition called "Dadaglobe Reconstructed" that sought to honor the centennial of Dada's inception, along with Tzara's ambitious project. Compiling over 100 works of art that were initially slated to appear in Tristan Tzara's Dadaglobe anthology, among which are works by Taeuber-Arp, the show ran from 5 February to 1 May 2016 at the Kunsthaus Zürich, and from 12 June to 18 September 2016 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.[30]
In 2020, Hauser & Wirth opened an online exhibition devoted to her work, the first in a series of international exhibitions devoted to her career.[4][3]
As of July 2020, a coordinated travelling retrospective of her work is scheduled to open in March 2021 at the Kunstmuseum Basel, and then travel[4] to the Tate Modern (15 July – 17 October)[31] and then to the MoMA.[2] Showing over 400 pieces,[32] it will be the UK's first retrospective of her work,[31] and, in America, will be the most comprehensive[4] and her first major exhibition in the country in 40 years.[3][33]
Composition with Diagonals and Circle, painting, 1916
Vertical-Horizontal Composition, textile, 1916
Coupe Dada, sculpture, 1916
Arch pattern composition, gouache on paper, 1918
Dada Composition (Tête au plat), painting, 1920
Tête Dada, wood sculpture, 1920
Dada carpet, 1920
Abstract composition, stained glass, 1926–27
Composition r, gouache on paper, 1931
Quatre espaces à croix brisée, oil on canvas, 1932
Balance, 1932-1933
