Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Since 1977, the Stiftung Hans Arp & Sophie Taeuber-Arp e.V. has cared for the artistic legacy of Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Since 2010 Fine Art Partners is the exclusive advisor to the Stiftung Hans Arp & Sophie Taeuber-Arp, working closely with leading museums, academics and galleries to further support the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) was a leading figure in Zurich and Paris Dada, a participant in the "International" Constructivist movement, and an advocate of concrete art and geometric abstraction. After studying textile techniques at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg in 1912 Taeuber-Arp pushed the limits of abstraction in paintings, sculpture, and textiles. Her austerely geometric art arose from her belief in the innate expressive power of colour, line and form. She rejected her contemporaries’ progressive schematization of objective form. During the years of Dada in Zurich (1916–20), Taeuber-Arp not only painted but also made a series of polychrome wood heads, including the portrait of Jean Arp (1918–19; Paris, Pompidou) her later husband. Together with her husband and artist Theo van Doesburg, Taeuber-Arp received a commission to design the interior Café de l’Aubette (now destroyed), one of the first modernist spaces to unify form and function, in Strasbourg, France.

In 1981 the Museum of Modern Art (New York) mounted the one woman show "Sophie Taeuber-Arp" which travelled to the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), and the Musée d'Art Contemporain (Montreal). Since 2003 solo exhibtions were held at Museum Bellerive, Zurich (2007), Fondation Arp (2007) and Museum Picasso, Malaga (2010). Her work is found e.g. in the MOMA collection and the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco.

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